Episode 46: Isaiah and the Messiah Part 10: Shema Israel–No Peace For The Wicked

Isaiah 48 is very much a downer. Israel is repeatedly confronted with the word “shema” which means to both hear and obey–and then they are outright told that they have never heard and never obeyed. Yahweh delivers a very potent warning for those exilic Jews who are going to refuse to leave Babylon when Cyrus sets them free, and it’s really easy to point our fingers and shake our heads but–how are we, all of us, still comfortably residing in Babylon when we have been called to be elsewhere?

Transcript below, fairly rough. Good exercise in grace and letting the small errors go 😉
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Last week, in Isaiah chapter 47, Yahweh really takes Babylon to task for the first time. I mean, with the whole of Isaiah being warnings about being carted off into exile and all and with all the ranting against the nations as a whole, we have heard almost nothing about Babylon itself, and after this week’s chapter, we’re going to hear a lot more nothing about Babylon. I mean, for all the talk about Babylon in teachings and such, the Bible treats it like it isn’t that big of a deal. Israel’s disobedience, inability to trust Yahweh, and lack of faith—now that is a big deal and that is the major theme. Babylon was nothing but a tool Yahweh used for a season and then she fell just like every other empire in history. Anyway, I talked a lot about Babylon and some of the misconceptions about it last week. This week, we are moving forward to a section of Scripture where the focus is on the word shema, which means not only listen, or hear, but also obey as well as words with similar meanings. We’re also going to hear the word translated as “announce” quite a few times, and that word in Hebrew is also related to, you guessed it, shema!

I get the feeling like Yahweh is saying something that Israel had better hear and obey! More “new things” are on the way.

Hi, I am Tyler Dawn Rosenquist and welcome to Character in Context, where I teach the historical and ancient sociological context of Scripture with an eye to developing the character of the Messiah. If you prefer written material, I have five years’ worth of blog at theancientbridge.com as well as my six books available on amazon—including a four-volume curriculum series dedicated to teaching Scriptural context in a way that even kids can understand it, called Context for Kids—and I have two video channels on YouTube with free Bible teachings for both adults and kids. You can find the link for those on my website. Past broadcasts of this program can be found at characterincontext.podbean.com and transcripts can be had for most broadcasts at theancientbridge.com.

All Scripture this week is taken from the ESV, the English Standard Version because that is what my interlinear is in. And unlike my usual MO, I will be saying Yahweh instead of God and Lord because there are so many different voices speaking back and forth in Isaiah 40-55 that it will help eliminate confusion. Otherwise, I always use titles because I don’t like to use His name carelessly or casually. Just a personal preference.

As a review, Isaiah chapters 1-39 is much about the failure of Israel to trust God more than they fear Assyria—and chapters 40-48 are about the failure of Israel to trust God more than they fear Babylonia. Ironic, eh? So, what’s the Assyria or Babylonia in your life? Don’t tell me you don’t have one, or more!

In addition, in the first 39 chapters of Isaiah we see this message of “hear, trust, obey or else” whereas, increasingly, from chapter 40 onwards we see this theme of unconditional pardon and promise despite an absolute unwillingness, as a nation, to hear, trust, and obey—and especially to admit their fault and repent.

48 Hear this, O house of Jacob, who are called by the name of Israel, and who came from the waters of Judah, who swear by the name of the Lord and confess the God of Israel, but not in truth or right.

Do you remember a few chapters back when Yahweh was talking about people who would come and call themselves by the name of Jacob and name himself by the name of Israel? Let’s look at Isaiah 44:5:

This one will say, ‘I am the Lord’s,’ another will call on the name of Jacob, and another will write on his hand, ‘The Lord’s,’ and name himself by the name of Israel.”

That verse was referring to foreigners coming in and joining themselves to the Lord’s people. Isaiah 48:1 ain’t about those people. Isaiah 47 was all about Babylon’s doom and I should imagine the exiles would have enjoyed reading/listening to that. “Yeah, you get ‘em, Lord!” And we have this reversal of tone here where we can just see the dad, who was scolding the neighborhood bully, turns to their kid in order to take them to task for their role in this as well. From Isaiah 40 through to this point, Israel has been refusing to admit culpability in her own exile. She feels picked on and victimized and abandoned. It gets to the point where you are reading and just facepalming and saying, “Seriously? You guys still don’t get it?” So let’s read that verse again in light of the context so far:

48 Hear this, O house of Jacob, who are called by the name of Israel, and who came from the waters of Judah, who swear by the name of the Lord and confess the God of Israel, but not in truth or right.

As opposed to the foreigners in 44:5, these ones do not call themselves or name themselves but are already called by that name. These are the native-born children of Abraham living in exile. And we have a rare mention of Jacob, Israel, and Judah—the trifecta. So, this is the fullness of the children of Abraham. No one would swear by the name of Yahweh or claim Him as Lord unless He was their God. BUT, declares Yahweh, they are not swearing in His Name in truth or right. This is a direct violation of the third commandment not to take the Name of the Lord in vain, which goes way beyond using it as a swear word and also includes using His Name in an oath or vow and then not being true to it, or claiming Him as Lord and then acting contrary to His character and expectations. The third commandment is the easiest for a believer to break.

So, verse 1 tells the exiles to “hear and obey” and then openly questions their legitimacy as loyal followers. From verses 2-11 we are going to see the theme “you never hear or obey”. Ouch.

² For they call themselves after the holy city, and stay themselves on the God of Israel; the Lord of hosts is his name.

This reminds me of social media. You can claim that Jerusalem is the city of your birth, you can change your name, and you can talk all you want about how Yahweh, however you pronounce the Name, is your God and how faithful you are to Him, but it is meaningless if you are only fooling yourself and posturing for others. Talk is nothing. Right here Yahweh says something that should strike fear into their hearts and inspire trust—He is Yahweh Tzva’ot—Yahweh of armies. He commands all the forces of Heaven. Babylon is nothing. He is everything.

³ “The former things I declared of old; they went out from my mouth, and I announced them; then suddenly I did them, and they came to pass.

I don’t even know how many times in Deutero-Isaiah that this has been repeated. Only Yahweh, among the supposed gods of the nations, only Yahweh declares the future and has it come to pass. It is His proof that He alone is God and He alone is Creator of all and therefore Master of all history. Because He has this established and perfect track record, they should hear and obey. What are the former things that He declared of old? We see them in Isaiah 1-39, the “or else” part of the “hear and obey” dictates. He told them they would be conquered and carried away from the Land and it happened. They can’t claim ignorance of that.

⁴ Because I know that you are obstinate, and your neck is an iron sinew and your forehead brass,

Oh man, if you have read my book, Image-bearing, Idolatry, and the New Creation then you know exactly what this means. He is comparing them to cattle, which He has been doing ever since the golden calf incident. This is rebellion language, comparing them to beasts. Which makes this next line make more sense:

⁵ I declared them to you from of old, before they came to pass I announced them to you, lest you should say, ‘My idol did them, my carved image and my metal image commanded them.’

The purpose of prophecy, I need you to hear me on this because we tend to get it wrong. The purpose of prophecy is never for us to figure out the future (because frankly it never works) but instead, when the future happens as predicted, that we can point to it and say, “My God said this would happen!” That’s it. If we use prophecy in order to try and brainiac our way into knowing the future, then we ourselves tend to behave in such a way that we become the god who has given revelation. We are leaning on our own understanding. We even go so far as to interpret everything we see according to our understanding. At most, we can say, “The Bible says such and such and it will happen,” but we don’t like to stop at that. As such, we are not using prophecy correctly, as a witness to God’s uniqueness among the powers in heaven above and on earth below and as a testament to Him alone being a god. We stray into the area, as I was explaining last week, or using the Bible as a book of omens to be interpreted so that we can tell the future for others and that can lapse into the realm of magic. We must be careful. And yes, I know that makes a lot of people angry. But I will say this—how many people over the years predicting events based on the Bible text have been right? I mean, without reading into the text in such a way as to artificially make themselves right? For 1900 years, every generation has thought they were the last one and used the Bible to prove it and saw current events in light of the Bible and they have all been wrong. But they could all “prove” it. We are using prophecy wrong. It exists to legitimate Yahweh and to steer His people on the path to obedience. It is there to be believed, not to be used so that we can become prognosticators.

Because there are ministries who pride themselves on all this and, frankly, exalt themselves. It’s as though they are saying “The idol of my mind figured this out.” Okay, I’m done.

⁶ “You have heard; now see all this; and will you not declare it? From this time forth I announce to you new things, hidden things that you have not known.

New things and hidden things that they have not known. Moses did not give them everything. Nor have the prophets that have gone before. Remember, the whole idea that God is locked into a cycle and bound to operate according to the same patterns over and over again and unable to do a new thing is actually paganism repackaged. He is not at the mercy of the system, He created the system. He can do what He wants and is only bound by His promises and His character. So He can do old things (delivering His people) in new ways, and even in entirely new ways. He can do anything and we have to remember that He is God and that means no limits. And especially not limited by our understandings.

Next week, we are going to hear about new things and this series on Isaiah and the Messiah is about to get a lot more Messianic.

⁷ They are created now, not long ago; before today you have never heard of them, lest you should say, ‘Behold, I knew them.’

What is created now? Go back one verse, the announcement of new things. Not that Yahweh didn’t already know about them, but we didn’t. Amazingly enough, He doesn’t confide in us about everything—wonder why.

In addition to “heard” and “announce” references, we see the word “knew” or yadah a lot as well. And it is not used positively—we do not know everything. We have not even been told anywhere near everything. We have to get comfortable about who we are and who we are not and our limitations. That is what trust is about.

⁸ You have never heard, you have never known, from of old your ear has not been opened. For I knew that you would surely deal treacherously, and that from before birth you were called a rebel.

This is why He doesn’t tell us stuff. I like what Oswalt says in his NICOT commentary, pg 268

“Thus the principle of prophecy being enunciated here is: Enough information in enough time so that it will be unmistakably clear that God is in control of history, but not enough so that people can become secure in their own foreknowledge and not need to live in dependence on God.”

That’s what magic and Babylonian wisdom sought to circumvent.

Why is Yahweh doing this when they are so stubborn and treacherous?

⁹ “For my name’s sake I defer my anger; for the sake of my praise I restrain it for you, that I may not cut you off.

For Himself. For His own reputation and glory. So that the world can see Him as unique among all the gods in terms of being Master of history but also kind, faithful, compassionate, merciful and full of self-control. Fruit stuff. Not for them. Despite them. Heck, despite us.

¹⁰ Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver; I have tried you in the furnace of affliction.
¹¹ For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another.

Again, He punished them—for His own sake. They were increasingly henotheistic. They were giving His glory to other gods when they relied on Tammuz for the fertility of their flocks and Dagon for their crops and Ba’al Hadad for the rains. Israel had to be exclusively monotheistic or His glory was being given to others. In addition, when they were in danger they turned to Egypt or Assyria or whoever for help. Again, glory for military victories being given to others!

So, that was our second section. Remember, verse 1 tells the exiles to “hear and obey” and then openly questions their legitimacy as loyal followers. From verses 2-11, they were told “you never hear or obey”. In verse 12 they are again told to listen, but now their legitimacy as His people are confirmed—not because they are deserving but because He is deserving of glory.

¹² “Listen to me, O Jacob, and Israel, whom I called! I am he; I am the first, and I am the last.

“They are called by Yahweh.” End of story. That is all the legitimacy they need. And then He gives His credentials to be able to give them that legitimacy.

¹³ My hand laid the foundation of the earth, and my right hand spread out the heavens; when I call to them, they stand forth together.

Even the stars assemble at His command because He created them. Why is He mentioning this? Because we are about to start another disputation, but not against the nations or Babylon this time, but against Israel.

¹⁴ “Assemble, all of you, and listen! Who among them has declared these things? The Lord loves him; he shall perform his purpose on Babylon, and his arm shall be against the Chaldeans.

We’re back to King Cyrus. And Yahweh is even saying that He loves Him—which shouldn’t be alarming. Love can be a matter of preferring one person over another (Jacob I loved, Esau I hated) or perhaps He loves Cyrus because Cyrus is fulfilling His will. Yahweh has already called Cyrus His shepherd, his anointed, and the man of His counsel. As we have seen before, this sort of chaps Israel’s collective hide and Yahweh has been having to address their complaints. They want a Davidic king to rise up from among them and to take vengeance upon Babylonia, dash their babies against the rocks, kill all their elderly, make their women widows and childless—seriously folks, this is in the Psalms. This wasn’t even their second preference.

¹⁵ I, even I, have spoken and called him; I have brought him, and he will prosper in his way.

This is going to happen folks. I don’t care if you approve because, as I said, this is for me and you are only the beneficiaries. I don’t care if you like it. I AM first and last, not you. Your approval would be nice, and I deserve it, along with a lot of gratitude, but it is not required.

¹⁶ Draw near to me, hear this: from the beginning I have not spoken in secret, from the time it came to be I have been there.”

Draw near to me—in English it doesn’t come through but that’s qirbu from the same root word shared by korban—translated as offering. Offerings, far from being about forgiveness from sin, were about drawing near in relationship. So He is inviting them into that closeness, draw near, without the Temple available.

Once more in speaking about secret communications, Yahweh is setting Himself apart from the false gods—whereas they communicated “in secret” only with priests and kings and not very clearly at that, Yahweh has made His expectations and character clearly known from the very beginning. He has never been secretive about what He wants and what He is like. Remember in Is 45:19?

“I did not speak in secret, in a land of darkness; I did not say to the offspring of Jacob, ‘Seek me in vain.’ I the Lord speak the truth; I declare what is right.”

All of that is pretty straightforward but then we get to this and linguistically, theologically and historically—no one knows for certain what to make of it. The Bible is like that sometimes:

And now the Lord God has sent me, and his Spirit.

Okay. It was just kind of stuck in there. Because Yahweh was speaking and Yahweh is still speaking in the next verse.  So, is this the prophet? Despite the “me” it is unlikely because no other prophet ever made such a claim. It’s totally not Cyrus. And it isn’t Israel either, not after the tar and feathering they just got—plus, Israel doesn’t call itself “me”. We can point to the second servant song in the next chapter and say it is Yeshua/Jesus the Messiah and it certainly fits with His claims—but why on earth it is just stuck right here is a big mystery. Guess what? We don’t know everything about the Bible! And the Tanack, the OT, wasn’t formalized until after the time of Yeshua—we see this from the differences between the Septuagint and the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Masoretic text that was not nailed down in form until like the 8^th century CE. Is this a scribal error? We just don’t know, but it is okay. We look at the Bible as an overall work and we can’t get overly upset about differences between manuscripts because, frankly, it does no good. Back to the text:

¹⁷ Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: “I am the Lord your God, who teaches you to profit, who leads you in the way you should go.
¹⁸ Oh that you had paid attention to my commandments! Then your peace would have been like a river, and your righteousness like the waves of the sea;

¹⁹ your offspring would have been like the sand, and your descendants like its grains; their name would never be cut off or destroyed from before me.”

And, as if that little “me and His Spirit” line had never even happened, Yahweh goes right back into lamenting over Israel and their failure to hear, obey and trust Him. The warnings of Deuteronomy come true. But that mystery voice–It’s almost as though a disembodied voice spoke in the middle of an awkward silence and then everyone went back to what they were doing before. Anyway, this new admonishment hearkens back to a lot of Scripture and most notably God’s promises to Abraham in Genesis at the Akeidah, the binding of Isaac.

17 I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies, 18 and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.

But we also see Psalm 81 referenced:

⁸ Hear, O my people, while I admonish you! O Israel, if you would but listen to me!
⁹ There shall be no strange god among you; you shall not bow down to a foreign god.
¹⁰ I am the Lord your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it.

¹¹ “But my people did not listen to my voice; Israel would not submit to me.
¹² So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts, to follow their own counsels.
¹³ Oh, that my people would listen to me, that Israel would walk in my ways!

This is a lament but also an accusation. You can hear Yahweh lamenting, “If only…BUT…” over and over again. It is really very sad and tragic. He is reminding them of how they could have been blessed but weren’t making the next statements even more damning and powerful:

²⁰ Go out from Babylon, flee from Chaldea, declare this with a shout of joy, proclaim it, send it out to the end of the earth;
    say, “The Lord has redeemed his servant Jacob!”
²¹ They did not thirst when he led them through the deserts; he made water flow for them from the rock;
    he split the rock and the water gushed out.

²² “There is no peace,” says the Lord, “for the wicked.”

Wow, let’s deconstruct this. Yahweh is telling them, “When Cyrus lets you return, then GO. Babylon is not your home anymore. And when you go, go out with rejoicing like you did from Egypt after your deliverance at the Yam Suf, the Red Sea. And you make sure that everyone knows that I did the impossible—I returned a people, a nation, from exile back to their homeland. Nothing like it has ever happened before. People will marvel at my covenant faithfulness and power! The ends of the earth will exult in my praise.”

That is the obligation of everyone who has experienced any kind of salvation/deliverance/miracle by the way—not just this special case here.

Yahweh then returns to Exodus language regarding His provision. That this didn’t happen and wasn’t necessary on the trip home from Babylonia is beside the point—this is figuratively speaking of Yahweh’s past and present provision for their needs. The return to the Land was a shadow of their Exodus out of Egypt, through the wilderness, and into the Land of Canaan. And IF Israel had done as commanded, and they had all returned then there would have been no problem getting the walls, the city and the Temple rebuilt because the Samaritans would have been unable to bully such a large crowd of people. It’s an important lesson on what we can accomplish when we band together and leave our comfort zone and make no mistake, Babylon was the comfort zone of all comfort zones.

The last line seems out of place if you do not know history,

“There is no peace,” says the Lord, “for the wicked.”

Who are the wicked? The wicked are the ones who did not return when they were able to. Seems harsh but they were spitting in Yahweh’s face. They were choosing the safety and luxuries of Babylon, which did not diminish in peace, luxury and safety after the Persians took over. If anything, the empire expanded and Babylon never diminished permanently until sometime before 275 BCE and was not entirely abandoned until about a thousand years ago. It remained a great center of learning and commerce to the time of Alexander the Great’s death. But during this time, when the Jews could leave but didn’t, Babylon was like America at its peak. Sometimes I look at the lack of missionary activity in the world and look around and think, “Yeah, we are too comfortable to go and carry out the Great Commission—we’re just like those Babylonian Jews who were enjoying life where they were. I mean, apart from the Haman incident, there are no records of persecutions against the Jews under the Babylonians, Medes, Persians or Greeks in the region that would later be known as the Parthian Empire.

They weren’t in danger in Babylon. They weren’t escaping it. If they had been in danger I can guarantee that they all would have returned. Babylon was not to be escaped, it was to be left because and only because God gave them their freedom and their nation back and told them to go home. And Yeshua told us to go out and preach—He sent us out on the Great Commission. But we are just as glued to our comforts as the disobedient Jews that Yahweh called the wicked and said there would be no peace for. And I include myself in that. I think about it every night when I am praying for the Chinese tribes and Hindu peoples who have never even heard the Name of our Lord. How do we justify staying home? How did our parents and grandparents justify it? Some of the Babylonian Jews who refused to go sent money, but I imagine that most didn’t. Their home was Babylonia, their extended families were in Babylonia, their businesses were in Babylonia, and their concerns were in Babylonia. They’re really just entirely like us. We want the world to come but we don’t want to preach the Word to the ends of the earth first, as is required, to every tribe and tongue and people. The end result is that this whole world has become a modern-day Babylon that we are content to never leave. The Babylonian Jews considered themselves the crème de la crème and there is even a remark in the Babylonian Talmud calling the purity and parentage and quality of the majority of Jews who returned into question. Which reminds me of so many of the people I see on social media preening and posturing and congratulating themselves on knowing stuff because of youtube and google and being very dazzled at how set apart they are. But we’re in Babylon, all of us, whether in the city or in the country (regardless of which country) not doing the hard work of the Great Commission. We’re comfy. No matter how far off the grid we think we are, we are all still plugged in. If not then you have no way to listen to this anyway and so I wouldn’t be talking to you.

Welcome to Babylon. Enjoy your stay. That’s the whole point.