Episode 178: Psalm 4: What on Earth Is Going on Here??

There is so much debate about this Psalm. Not only does it contain two words that we don’t know what the heck they mean, but the context is quite the mystery. Is the Psalmist (David?) being lied about? Are the Kingdom elites resorting to Ba’al worship in order to bring an end to a famine? Is this Psalm 3 part 2 where David’s advisors are defecting to Absalom? Lots of questions and lots of debate.

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Psalm 4 seems simple and straightforward enough, right? Nope. Oh, my goodness, there are so many different puzzles here, and so there are also a few plausible interpretations of what was going on here and why. Remember back when I told you that one of the best things about the Psalms is how purposefully vague they are? People can read themselves and their own situations into the Psalms and pray them as though they wrote them themselves. When we are facing crises and hardship, are being attacked, betrayed, lied about, or if we are just doubting God’s faithfulness, we can go to the Psalms and find one that fits our prayer needs. And that’s awesome but it is also problematic when we are trying to study and mine them for context to get the most out of our theological studies. Psalm 4, unlike Psalm 3, gives us no clear leading as to what the problem is, who the specific enemies are, and we definitely don’t know the final outcome of the crisis. Was this written during a famine, when there was no rain and David’s own councilors are turning on him? Some scholars can give a really good argument for it. Is it Psalm 3 part two and David is dealing with the split in loyalties among the wealthy? Maybe, we’ll talk about that too. Is David dealing with false accusations? That’s possible too! How much does it really matter when we apply it to our own lives and pray it for ourselves?

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 years’ worth of blogs 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 (affiliate link). I also have two video channels on YouTube with free Bible teachings for adults and kids. You can find the links for those on my website. Past broadcasts of this program can be found at characterincontext.podbean.com, and transcripts for most broadcasts at theancientbridge.com. If you have kids, I also have a weekly broadcast where I teach them Bible context in a way that shows them why they can trust God and how He wants to have a relationship with them through the Messiah.

As we did last week, the Psalm itself will be read initially from Robert Alter’s excellent The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary (affiliate link). After that, I will pull all Scripture from the Christian Standard Bible (CSB). Remember that Alter loves to capture more of the sound and the brevity of the Psalms in Hebrew, which is always like a third of the words we use in English to try to say the same thing.

For the lead player, with stringed instruments, a David psalm. When I call out, answer me, my righteous God. In the straits, You set me free. Have mercy upon me and hear my prayer. Sons of man, how long will My glory be shamed? You love vain things and seek out lies. selah But know that the LORD set apart His faithful. The LORD will hear when I call to Him. Quake, and do not offend. Speak in your hearts on your beds, and be still. selah Offer righteous sacrifices and trust in the LORD. Many say, “Who will show us good things?” Lift up the light of Your face to us, LORD. You put joy in my heart, from the time their grain and their drink did abound. In peace, all whole, let me lie down and sleep. For You, LORD, alone, do set me down safely.

First of all, we have to take care of the basic housework. There are two words in this Psalm that we don’t know the meaning of. The Psalms have more of those words than any other book of the Bible, by far. The first Hebrew word is menatseach, which Alter translates as the lead player and other translators call the choir director. In the Septuagint, the authorized Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures in the second/third centuries BCE, this first line reads “for the end” most likely because the last line makes it clear that this was an evening prayer. Honestly, it makes no difference to us because we don’t know the tune anymore and we can pray it whenever we want, right? Don’t tell me when I can and can’t pray Psalm 4. The second unknown word is selah, which is why it isn’t translated into any English word. We just don’t know what it means at all. Probably a musical term. In the Septuagint, they translated it diapsalma which is a combination of the word psalma (meaning psalm, it’s where we get our English word) and the prefix dia, which can mean quite a few things. A mystery word translated into another mystery word and then just transliterated into English back to selah so it would at least sound the same. Hebrew isn’t a dead language anymore because people speak a modern version of it but for all intents and purposes, a lot of the words are deader than a doornail because we have no clue what they mean. By the time the Temple was rebuilt after the exile, all of the singers of the House of the Lord had been dead for a long time. Musical notations would have been one of the first things to be lost.

Let’s look at this Psalm verse by verse in the CSB:

Answer me when I call, God, who vindicates me. You freed me from affliction; be gracious to me and hear my prayer. 

We can tell right away that this is a lament Psalm. The writer is using phrases like, “Answer me when I call” and reminding God of past acts of deliverance. The author, whether it is David or someone writing for David or in the style of David or about David, is communicating the existence of a covenant relationship where God can be called upon and be expected to listen, and who has a history with the writer. We see three supplications here; supplications are cries for aid and action from either God or someone else who has the capacity to help. They are cries to answer, to give relief from suffering, and to hear. The author desires vindication of either their faith in Yahweh or because they have somehow been wronged. It isn’t entirely clear, as we will see. Despite their covenant relationship where Yahweh has sworn to be faithful and to protect His people and specifically His anointed king from enemies, they still recognize that it is their duty to take their petitions specifically to Yahweh and not to other gods or foreign armies—of course, this is a problem throughout the history of the divided Kingdoms of Judah and Israel. But this was penned during the reign of David, before the split. Despite David’s sins, we don’t ever see him crying out to anyone except Yahweh for help. Yahweh is the true vindicator and Savior. This is a common thread throughout the Davidic Psalms. The author talks about a prayer to be heard but what prayer is this? We aren’t specifically told.

How long, exalted ones, will my honor be insulted? How long will you love what is worthless and pursue a lie? Selah

Another common phrase in laments is “how long?” It is a cry of frustration. Despite seeming to be directed at the b’nei ish, literally the sons/daughters of man, it is actually a crying out to God to do something about the undefined actions of those who are wealthy and powerful. When the various Psalmists want to talk about the poor and lowly, they will use the idiom b’nei adam, sons/daughters of adam/humankind. Despite sounding like they should mean the same thing, they don’t. They are polar opposites. There are some different ideas about how this verse should be translated—is the psalmist’s reputation being slandered or is God Himself being somehow dishonored? The Hebrew word translated as honor is kavod, which can mean glory. Is the object of scorn the author’s personal honor or the author’s God? Poetry is notoriously difficult to translate, or to even understand completely in the original language—even when the author is alive to explain it! In this case, powerful people are loving what is “worthless” and pursuing a “lie.” Are they worshiping false gods and going after them? That’s certainly a common theme throughout Scripture. Are they slandering the author with a lie? Have his councilors and “men of rank” defected to Absalom’s army? All these are plausible.

Know that the Lord has set apart the faithful for himself; the Lord will hear when I call to him.

Whoever the enemy is and whatever it is they are doing, the author has finished their complaint and is now directly addressing and instructing them, seven times. At this point, the Psalm shifts to an expression of confidence and instruction in wisdom. The author will be vindicated and the Lord will make things right for those who follow and obey Him. So these children of men are advised to know, yada, Yahweh and to understand that Yahweh is faithful to those who love Him. The wording on this is a bit confusing and could mean that Yahweh works miracles for the faithful or that He sets them apart in His safekeeping but the uptake on it, either way, is that the author is warning them that they have the ear and attention of Yahweh and so these adversaries had better be careful in what they are doing—they shouldn’t believe they can get away with whatever it is forever. If they desire to remain “men of rank” then they need to be wise.

 Be angry and do not sin; reflect in your heart while on your bed and be silent. Selah

Again, this is hard to translate because rigzu means to tremble or to quake with fear or awe. But when it was translated into the Greek in the Septuagint, they used a word meaning anger and that’s what Paul quoted from in Ephesians 4:26.  But the context for Paul is different—that being said, it is the most Jewish thing in the world to take a verse that means one thing and tweak it a little or a lot to make a different point. We will see this quite a bit when we get to the Gospel of Matthew. If you have read any of the Talmud, you already know this is true. They didn’t play by our rules, and God was speaking to and through them and not us! So He wouldn’t follow our rules of what makes for legitimate Bible interpretation or history or science or any of that. I believe that the original meaning really was something along the lines of “shake in your boots and stop sinning.” You know, like a “fear God and repent” sort of thing. The phrase “reflect in your heart” is our translation of a Hebrew idiom meaning “to think” because remember they believed that the brain was kinda useless and that thinking, reasoning and feeling happed in the heart, kidneys, and bowels because of how those felt when they experienced strong emotion. I like to translate this whole verse as, “Fear God and stop sinning. Think about what you are doing and shut up.” And of course, that’s always good advice for us all when we get uppity or even every day.  Four more instructions—fear Him, do not sin, think, and shut up. Although that last word might also be translated as weep, which is what we should do when we start thinking about the nonsense we have been up to.

 Offer sacrifices in righteousness and trust in the Lord.

Now, here is where the theory that this is just David being upset at his advisors for siding with Absalom really begins to break down. Something is wrong with their sacrifices or how they are offering them or maybe what gods they are offering them to. Certainly Yeshua/Jesus told people that if you had done something to hurt another person, God wouldn’t accept an offering until you made things right with the person you hurt. There is no such thing as a private sin when it involves other people. So they are commanded to offer sacrifices, but they have to be righteous offerings (which means with right heart motivations, after performing just acts to make up for what they have done wrong if possible) and those offerings must be offered to and only to Yahweh. If these sacrifices represent petitions in a time of crisis, then Yahweh is the only one they should be going to, but we will discuss that later. The last two instructions to the elites are to offer appropriate sacrifices and to trust Yahweh.

Many are asking, “Who can show us anything good?” Let the light of your face shine on us, Lord.

The author turns their attention to Yahweh again in complaint and petition. The “many” or rabbim (a common theme in laments, the prophets, and the Gospels) are crying out in complaint but not to God. They are crying out to anyone who will listen—perhaps hoping to catch the ear of another god in the area. Something must be desperately wrong. Either the author is being blamed for bad circumstances or the “men of rank” have lost faith in Yahweh and are turning to other gods. Presumably, one way or another, David is being cast aside as being unable to lead them through this crisis—perhaps they believe that David is to blame for the crisis. Is God angry at David? Is rain being withheld? If so, then the elites would certainly be wondering if another king or another god is needed to bring back prosperity. The people, for one reason or another, are not flourishing and prospering. We see in 2 Sam 21 that the land experienced famine for three years because of a sin Saul committed against the Gibeonites, their covenant partners from the time of Joshua and Caleb.  But then we have the question of, “if this is about a recorded historical event, then why no title on this one when the last one has a title?” Whatever the case is, whether the elites are trying to get rid of David for one reason or another or trying to get rid of Yahweh worship in favor of other gods—the challenge is clear, “Show me the money!” That’s the sense of “who can show us anything good?” Good hearkens back to the days of Creation where God provided every need for the people whom He created.

The Psalmist responds with a key quotation from the Aaronic blessing which we find in Num 6:24-26: “May the Lord bless you and protect you; may the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; may the Lord look with favor on you and give you peace.”’ The author is appealing to the blessing in whole by using a part of it, something very common in the Bible and other Jewish writings. The formal term for that is synecdoche (sinekdeckey). We do this too in our culture in various ways. It’s why we say Coke or Kleenex when what we mean is soda and tissues in general. In this case, a phrase from the Aaronic blessing is supposed to remind us of the entire thing. In the Bible, we could use “Come out of her my people!” as a great example of why we need to know the whole Bible. That phrase is telling us to go to Jeremiah 51 so we can see what the Roman Empire has in common with ancient Babylon—wealth, oppression, military violence, and idolatry—and why the believers in Yeshua need to separate themselves from serving the wrong Empire. When we read it out of context, people start picking on Catholics.

You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and new wine abound.

Now the author expresses confidence in the Lord despite outward appearances and circumstances. After asking for the promises implied in the Aaronic blessing to those who put their trust in Yahweh, the psalmist tells Yahweh that no matter what the elites take pleasure in, he or she takes joy in Yahweh. Interesting little note here—the Hebrew word for grain here is dagan and of course, the Philistine god Dagon is the grain god of the Philistines. There might be a play on words here if there is indeed a famine going on. They are focused on grain and perhaps appealing to the god who is regionally thought to be able to bless that harvest. They seem to be crying out in the wrong way to the wrong god for what only Yahweh can give them. But Yahweh always knows that the people need Him more than they need grain and wine. People with grain and wine, according to Moses, get fat, happy and contemptuous of the idea that they owe it all to Yahweh and must worship Him and follow His ways. Are the elites crying out to Dagon? Are they crying out against David because they want a different king who can provide the results they desire? Is it David’s faith in God that requires vindication? Some scholars think so. It’s certainly an interesting idea and definitely not out of character for the ancient Israelites and their fickle loyalties. But then, we are much the same, right? Heck, we complain about persecution over getting unfriended on social media when people get tired of our abusive behavior—oops—I mean, they can’t handle the truthful truthiness of our truth. It helps if truth is in all caps. It’s more true that way.

I will both lie down and sleep in peace, for you alone, Lord, make me live in safety.

I had mentioned before that in the Septuagint, the title is translated “for the end” instead of “by the choir director.” This verse is why they made that decision. The psalmist, after crying out to God, complaining way too vaguely for us to know for sure what the heck is going on, rebuking and instructing the Kingdom elites who have somehow gone astray, and petitioning God for favor and prosperity before finally telling God that He is enough even if everything is going wrong otherwise—well, we see that the psalmist is now so at peace that they will not only lie down in their bed but will also sleep in peace. Only the Lord can bring security and safety. There is no need to appeal to other gods. Being able to sleep in the midst of conflict and uncertainty is like the ultimate expression of faith and confidence. We also saw this same vote of confidence in Yahweh to deliver in Psalm 3 where David specifically said that despite the rebellion of his son Absalom against him, he is able to sleep and to wake back up again because Yahweh keeps him alive. Just as David didn’t kill the sleeping Saul who was trying to hunt him down and kill him, so David knows that the Lord will protect him from his enemies as well. We see this idea elsewhere in the Psalms and Proverbs that the wicked never sleep, but it’s okay because neither does Yahweh.

Okay, so we’re going to take a four week break from the Psalms–next week I will be giving another one of my scathing Yom Kippur presentations–and then we will start talking about the themes and common expressions in the Gospel of Matthew. If you remember, before starting Mark, we had to talk about the Greater Exodus, what the Gospel is, and why Yeshua used the expression Son of God to identify His ministry instead of the more common term Messiah. We need to talk about the “greater than” statements that Yeshua made about Himself, and in particular Yeshua as the Greater Moses and as Israel’s definitive wisdom teacher and God’s final word on His will. The Kingdom of Heaven as a concept and a reality is supremely important in everything Yeshua preaches and does. The core focus in Mark wasn’t on His teachings but on His works as the Yahweh-Warrior/Arm of the Lord prophesied by Isaiah where He was dismantling the kingdom of the Beast. With Matthew, the miracles take a real backseat to His teachings. Each of the four Gospels has a different purpose in teaching about Yeshua. Mark was written for a more mixed audience but Matthew was written for the predominantly Jewish believers in Christ and probably late first century, whereas Mark was likely the first written. Oh, and we also need to talk about ancient biographies because they don’t follow our modern rules at all.

So, I am excited and I hope you are too!

 

 

 

 



Isaiah and the Messiah–Podcasts and Transcripts–Seventeen part series.

Stuck inside? Ever wanted to really study Isaiah 40-56 in-depth without having to spend an arm and a leg on commentaries?

Are you a listener? Well, I have over fourteen hours of podcasts for you.

Are you a reader? Well, I have the equivalent of a commentary written out for you–with all my sources cited in the first transcript if you are wanting to purchase the books I used.

And, as usual, it is completely free of charge. Now, if you want to download these via podbean or iTunes, you can do that at characterincontext.podbean.com –which also links to my iTunes channel. 

If you have ever been interested in all the references to the Messianic Servant in the gospels, I’ve got that. If you are frustrated by the anti-missionaries taking verses out of context to get people to deny Yeshua/Jesus, I cover that. And it won’t take you as long to listen as it took me to study out and record! Not by a long shot! What do you have to lose?

Part 1–Comfort my People! A Voice of One Crying in the Desert! (Is 40)

Part 2–Idolatry in Ancient Israel and During the Exile

Part 3–Be Silent Before Me! Present Your Case! The First Idol Polemic (Is 41)

Part 4–The Servant Comes/Blind and Deaf Israel (Is 42)

Part 5–Polytheism and the Law of Continuity–Apart From Me There is No Savior (Is 43)

Part 6–Is 44:1-23, Hab 2, Jer 10, and Christmas Trees?

Part 7–Cyrus the Messiah? (44:23-45:14)

Part 8–Salvation for the Nations and the Marduk/Nebo Smackdown (45:15-46:13)

Part 9–Babylon the Virgin Queen? (Is 47)

Part 10–Shema Israel! No Peace for the Wicked! (Is 48)

Part 11–The Servant Speaks! The Second Servant Song. (49:1-13)

Part 12–The First Zion Song (49:14-50:3)

Part 13–The Servant Speaks Again! (50:4-51:11)

Part 14–The Good News! Your God Reigns! (51:2-52:12)

Part 15–The Suffering Servant Song (Is 52:13-53:13)

Part 16–The Third Zion Song–Your Husband Reigns! (Is 54)

Part 17–The Everlasting Covenant and Good News for the Outcasts (Is 55-56:8)



Episode 39: Isaiah and the Messiah Part 6: 44:1-23, Jer 10, Habbakuk 2–and Christmas Trees?

It’s crazy that this week just happened to be when this section of Scripture fell into place. Isaiah 44 contains the longest and most detailed idol polemic in all of Scripture and provides the context needed to understand Jeremiah 10:1-16 as well as Habbakuk 2 and even helps to understand Psalm 115. This week we are going to read Isaiah as well as portions of Jeremiah, Habbakuk, the Babylonian Erra Epic, Herodotus and Hittite writings in order to understand the ancient idolatrous mindset and why Yahweh was fighting so hard for the hearts and minds of His people in exile.

Transcript below, only moderately edited so please ignore the small stuff.

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Isaiah and the Messiah 6—Is 44:1-44:1-22

I hope you’ve been following this series from the beginning as we are now in part six of exploring Isaiah Chapters 40-55 in preparation for our Gospel of Mark studies that pull heavily from these chapters of Isaiah to explain and undergird the ministry of Yeshua/Jesus the Messiah. Isaiah isn’t easy to understand—very complex historically, very easily taken out of context with cherry-picked verses by anti-missionaries who want to undermine faith in the Savior, but we have been going through it verse by verse taking into consideration the literary, historical, contextual, the different voices speaking—all that jazz—in order to strip away the mystery of what Yahweh is saying through His prophet to the exiles in Babylon about their imminent freedom. Yahweh is fighting the mindsets of the grandchildren of those who were exiled for their gross idolatry, who were brought up in Babylon and know no other life, who have been living as a conquered people and who have been told by the world around them that they were conquered only because their God was conquered and that they will never go back to the Land because historically no nation has ever returned from exile. They are so deeply enmeshed in the polytheistic worldview that it has become their own worldview—especially since they were henotheists before the exile and not monotheists. As we see from the Scriptures, Israel never exclusively worshipped Yahweh until after the exile was over—before then He might have been at the top of their worship pile, but He was still one among many gods in direct violation of the first and second commandments.

Much of what we have covered so far has been Yahweh publicly challenging the nations and their gods in order to show that any other so-called are powerless and actually non-existent. It has played out with courtroom language with a summons to court, presentation of evidence and witnesses and several idol polemics delivered by the prophet in order to show how illogical idolatry truly is. The end message is—there is no hope for Israel other than Yahweh, and He is promising to deliver them, and no one will get in His way because no one can.

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.

Last week we started with a “but now” which forced us to backtrack into chapter 42 and we have the exact same thing today, so we have to backtrack into chapter 43 briefly—remember that no “therefore” or “but now” or “yet” or any conjunction exists on its own and has to be evaluated within the context of what went directly before. Chapters are pesky but necessary—but we can’t be bound by them in our studies. We can’t even just study one chapter without taking what went before it and often what comes after, into context. And today is going to be heavy in simply reading Scripture—we are going to delve into Jeremiah 10 and also Habbakuk 2—plus I am going to read from the Babylonian Erra Epic.

26 Put me in remembrance; let us argue together; set forth your case, that you may be proved right.
27 Your first father sinned, and your mediators transgressed against me.
28 Therefore I will profane the princes of the sanctuary, and deliver Jacob to utter destruction
and Israel to reviling.

To review, Israel, in this mock court case, has been telling Yahweh that they have been wronged, that He is blind to their cause and deaf to their complaints, and they haven’t accepted that their exile was their own fault. But right here Yahweh flat out tells them that the entire nation—even back to Abraham and Moses and Aaron—have been sinning against Him from the start and have only themselves to blame. That would chill anyone to the bone. And yet—we have another turnaround—their sin and God’s wrath isn’t the end of the story. Let’s move on into chapter 44:

 

44 “But now hear, O Jacob my servant,
Israel whom I have chosen!

Chosen for what? As Yahweh has said repeatedly, they were chosen, for His sake, to be witnesses of His mighty works and His glory. His faithfulness, grace and power—that He is unique and the gods of the nations are fictional. He says “Hear” and what does He want them to hear?

2 Thus says the Lord who made you,
who formed you from the womb and will help you:
Fear not, O Jacob my servant,
Jeshurun whom I have chosen.

Fear not—what have we learned that means in Isaianic poetry? This is a salvation oracle. Let’s look at His promises of deliverance:

3 For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground;
I will pour my Spirit upon your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants.

Here we have two parallelisms in a row and remember that parallelism is where you have two phrases saying the exact same thing with different wording. Yahweh says He will pour “water on the thirsty land” and “water on the dry ground. He immediately follows it up with another parallelism, equating pouring out “my Spirit on your offspring” and “my blessing on your descendants.” Spirit is equated with blessing and offspring with descendants—but wait, there’s more—the two parallelisms also parallel one another and give us the key to translating some of the verses in the past chapters about pouring out water in the desert—things that never happened historically with the return from exile. The pouring out of water is equated with the outpouring of His spirit. But wait—this didn’t happen either—at least not during the return from Babylon. But Yahweh has spoken it and so it must happen—when did it end up happening? At Shavuot/Pentecost after the resurrection where the Holy Spirit was poured out on the Jewish believers in Yeshua who were gathered at the Temple to pray. We see this, of course, in Acts 2. If this was referring to the exiles, it would not say “your descendants”—it would say “you.” But as for now, the exiles are still “dry ground” spiritually, which we will see in painful detail in the writings of Nehemiah, Ezra, and Malachi. They needed the empowerment of the Spirit to truly change, but it wouldn’t be happening anytime soon.

4 They shall spring up among the grass like willows by flowing streams.
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.”

 

These verses really solidify for me that this is something that didn’t happen until Yeshua’s time. We have people, obviously not native-born Israelites, claiming that they belong to the Lord, calling on the name of Jacob, writing the Lord’s Name on his hand (a mark of servitude in the ancient world), and naming HIMSELF by the name of Israel. These are things that no native-born would need to do. No, this is clearly speaking of the ingrafting of gentiles who freely chose to become part of Israel through belief in and association with the Messiah of Israel. Notice that these are all acts of individuals, and not of a nation as a whole.

6 Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts:
“I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god.
7 Who is like me? Let him proclaim it. Let him declare and set it before me,
since I appointed an ancient people. Let them declare what is to come, and what will happen.
8 Fear not, nor be afraid; have I not told you from of old and declared it? And you are my witnesses!
Is there a God besides me? There is no Rock; I know not any.”

 

Last week we talked about Regnal names—kingly titles. Here we have Yahweh, His personal Name, Melek Y’Israel—which proclaims the allegiance they owe to Him, Redeemer—this is more intimate, as the go’al was close kin who would save a person from distress, Yahweh Tzva’ot—Yahweh of armies—proclaiming His might and ability to save. Of course, we have seen this proclamation over and over again—“I am the first and the last; besides me there is no god,” and the specific word is elohim here, a generic term meaning “mighty one” that often refers, in context to the gods of the nations—as it does here. Again—first and last is a reference to the ancient law of continuity where polytheistic gods do not exist apart from the system, they are not like Yahweh, outside of time and space and having created them. If the universe and time all dissolved, Yahweh would still exist because He is first and last—He alone can exist apart from what He has created. Pagans saw their gods as part of creation, dependent on it, working in cooperation with it and needing it even. They were trapped by the confines of space and time and history just like humans were. So when Yahweh says, “Who is like me?” He is literally pointing all this out—no one claims to have a god that is anything like Yahweh, He is utterly foreign to their way of thinking. That is what it means to be first and last—and He has been communicating this to His people from the beginning—they can witness that it is true! That is why they were created in the first place!

Funny quick story here. In the Septuagint, the third-century BCE Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, they didn’t include the last bit “There is no Rock; I know not any.” The reason why is because they had already begun becoming very sensitive to how Yahweh was portrayed in the Bible—and they didn’t like comparing Him to a rock—even if it was His own words.

The next bit I am going to just read straight through with only a few notes and then I am going to read Jeremiah 10:1-16 and not simply the few verses that are generally taken out of context, and Habakkuk 2. We’re going to talk about how they are very similar and how well they line up with the section of the Erra Epic which describes in detail how the idol of Marduk in Babylon was manufactured. All comments in brackets are my comments

 

9 All who fashion idols are nothing, and the things they delight in do not profit. Their witnesses (their worshipers) neither see nor know, that they may be put to shame. (the Psalm 115 curse on those who worship false gods) 10 Who fashions a god or casts an idol that is profitable for nothing? 11 Behold, all his companions shall be put to shame, and the craftsmen are only human (they are the created, not the Creator). Let them all assemble, let them stand forth. They shall be terrified; they shall be put to shame together.

 

12 The ironsmith takes a cutting tool and works it over the coals. He fashions it with hammers and works it with his strong arm. He becomes hungry, and his strength fails; he drinks no water and is faint. (because he is only human) 13 The carpenter stretches a line; he marks it out with a pencil. He shapes it with planes and marks it with a compass. He shapes it into the figure of a man, with the beauty of a man, to dwell in a house. 14 He cuts down cedars, or he chooses a cypress tree or an oak and lets it grow strong among the trees of the forest. He plants a cedar and the rain nourishes it. 15 Then it becomes fuel for a man. He takes a part of it and warms himself; he kindles a fire and bakes bread. Also, he makes a god and worships it; he makes it an idol and falls down before it. 16 Half of it he burns in the fire. Over the half he eats meat; he roasts it and is satisfied. Also, he warms himself and says, “Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire!” 17 And the rest of it he makes into a god, his idol, and falls down to it and worships it. He prays to it and says, “Deliver me, for you are my god!” (He is worshiping and depending upon something that couldn’t even create itself)

 

18 They know not, nor do they discern, for he has shut their eyes, so that they cannot see, and their hearts, so that they cannot understand. (Psalm 115 again) 19 No one considers, nor is there knowledge or discernment to say, “Half of it I burned in the fire; I also baked bread on its coals; I roasted meat and have eaten. And shall I make the rest of it an abomination? Shall I fall down before a block of wood?” 20 He feeds on ashes (because that’s what was done with the rest of the same exact piece of wood); a deluded heart has led him astray, and he cannot deliver himself or say, “Is there not a lie in my right hand?”

Whoa, the right hand—remember what Isaiah said earlier, that Yahweh was holding on to Israel’s right hand, putting them at His left hand? Well, idolaters are standing at the left hand of idols. The contrast is very stark and very deliberate.

 

It looks silly to us because we get it now, how ridiculous this is. But to a polytheist, it was not so obvious. It was the context of their whole life—making idols and using them to placate, mollify, serve, and manipulate their gods. Now, I want to read from Jeremiah 10, and not just the few verses used out of context that people use in their zeal to discredit Christmas Trees, which I don’t like either but I am not going to use Scripture out of context in pursuit of an agenda—find another way, okay? I am going to read all of them and especially the ones that make it clear that this is referring to actual idols to whom people would go to seek wisdom and counsel and help.

10 Hear the word that the Lord speaks to you, O house of Israel. 2 Thus says the Lord:

“Learn not the way of the nations, nor be dismayed at the signs of the heavens because the nations are dismayed at them, 3 for the customs of the peoples are vanity. A tree from the forest is cut down and worked with an axe by the hands of a craftsman. 4 They decorate it with silver and gold; they fasten it with hammer and nails so that it cannot move. 5 Their idols are like scarecrows in a cucumber field, and they cannot speak; they have to be carried, for they cannot walk Do not be afraid of them, for they cannot do evil, neither is it in them to do good.” (no one would suggest that anyone would think it necessary to point out that a Christmas tree can’t walk or talk of do good or evil. They are compared to scarecrows for a reason—because they have been carved into the shape of a human being but people stop quoting this section once they get to the end of verse five because the context becomes clear).

(This language should sound familiar if you have listened to the whole series with Yahweh making demands that the gods of the nations do something, anything, good or bad to prove they are real)

6 There is none like you, O Lord; you are great, and your name is great in might.
7 Who would not fear you, O King of the nations? For this is your due; for among all the wise ones of the nations and in all their kingdoms there is none like you. 8 They are both stupid and foolish; the instruction of idols is but wood! (again, no one is seeking counsel from a Christmas tree) 9 Beaten silver is brought from Tarshish, and gold from Uphaz. They are the work of the craftsman and of the hands of the goldsmith; their clothing is violet and purple; they are all the work of skilled men. 10 But the Lord is the true God; he is the living God and the everlasting King. At his wrath the earthquakes, and the nations cannot endure his indignation. (the big national idols were carved from sacred wood, and covered from head to toe with beaten sheets of gold and silver and dressed up like kings and queens)

11 Thus shall you say to them: “The gods who did not make the heavens and the earth shall perish from the earth and from under the heavens.” 12 It is he who made the earth by his power, who established the world by his wisdom, and by his understanding stretched out the heavens. 13 When he utters his voice, there is a tumult of waters in the heavens, and he makes the mist rise from the ends of the earth.
He makes lightning for the rain, and he brings forth the wind from his storehouses. 14 Every man is stupid and without knowledge; every goldsmith is put to shame by his idols, for his images are false, and there is no breath in them. 15 They are worthless, a work of delusion; at the time of their punishment they shall perish. 16 Not like these is he who is the portion of Jacob, for he is the one who formed all things,
and Israel is the tribe of his inheritance; the Lord of hosts is his name.

Habakkuk 2:18-19 has a short section as well that is useful:

“…when its maker has shaped it, a metal image, a teacher of lies? For its maker trusts in his own creation when he makes speechless idols! Woe to him who says to a wooden thing, Awake; to a silent stone, Arise! Can this teach? Behold, it is overlaid with gold and silver, and there is no breath at all in it.”

Now, let’s compare this to the Erra Epic. Tablet 1 contains the following imprints. In context, Erra, the warrior god, is challenging Marduk, the king of the gods, because the idol in Marduk’s temple had lost its luster. Marduk explains that he left his dwelling when he caused the great flood. Everything in () is my commentary.

 

(Marduk speaking)

“As to my precious image (aka idol), which has been struck by the deluge that its appearance was sullied
I commanded fire to make my features shine (because it is overlaid with gold) and cleanse my apparel (evidently it wears clothing)

When it had shined my precious image and completed the task
I donned my lordly diadem and returned…. (when his idol looked suitable again, he returned his essence to it)

…I sent those craftsmen down to the depths, I ordered them not to come up
I removed the wood and gemstone and showed no one where…..
Where is the wood, flesh of the gods, suitable for the lord of the universe, (every culture I have come across seemed to believe that only certain kinds of wood were suitable to be the “flesh” of an idol – in this case, the wood is from the “mesu” tree)
The sacred tree, splendid stripling, perfect for lordship,
Whose roots thrust down a hundred leagues through the waters of the vast ocean to the depths of hell,
Whose crown brushed Anu’s heaven on high?
Where is the gemstone that I reserved for {damaged}?
Where is Ninildum, great carpenter of my supreme divinity, (Ninildum is the idol maker)
Wielder of the glittering hatchet, who knows what tool, (although we would think of a hatchet only in the hands of a lumberman, in this case the hatchet is the tool of a crafsman – hatchets are way smaller than axes and oftentimes in ancient languages they had one word for tool and context determines which one is being referenced)
Who makes it shine like the day and puts it at subjection to my feet?
….
Where are the choice stones, created by the vast sea, to ornament my diadem?” (big city gods were crowned with real crowns just as they were dressed with real clothing)

I am also going to include a quote from Trevor Bryce’s excellent work, Life and Society in the Hittite World, p 157—He writes, ‘In the latter part of the New Kingdom, the statues of the gods set up on bases in the sanctuaries of their temples were life-sized or larger. They were made of precious and semi-precious metals – gold silver, iron, bronze – or else of wood plated with gold, silver, or tin and sometimes decorated with precious materials like lapis lazuli.’  We have actual information on the statuette of the goddess Iyaya, ‘The divine image is a female statuette of wood, seated and veiled, one cubit (in height). Her body is plated with gold, but the body and the throne are plated with tin.’

So, we see a lot of similarities between the Era Epic, which is taking this project absolutely seriously and the Bible, which is not. But both are describing the same exact phenomenon—the creation of an idol out of sacred wood, covered with hammered precious metals, clothed in the finest fabrics, ornamented with precious gemstones, and polished until it shines, etc. I understand that a lot of people hate Christmas trees and want to discredit them, but that isn’t what this is about. It just isn’t. And I think the people who originally taught this knew it because I don’t see any other reason for ignoring most of the text and the other prophetic passages that go with it. Also, a dead tree wasn’t a symbol of fertility—that’s what sacred groves were for. When good kings came to power, they cut down the sacred groves—not to bring the trees inside, but to burn them outside the city gates in order to defile them. The first rule of sacred tree club is don’t cut down the sacred tree—or it isn’t sacred anymore. A dead tree isn’t a fertility symbol unless you carved it into an Asherah or one of the other fertility goddesses. Throughout Assyrian and Babylonian and Egyptian art, we see carved representations of people around trees with what looks to the untrained eye like boxes and ornaments and some ministries have colorized them to enhance the effect—but I have seen one of these up close at the St Louis Museum and have verified what ancient Near Eastern Scholars and archaeologists say—they are people using pinecones (you can see that it is a pinecone from up close) to pollinate the Tree of Life and the “boxes” are actually baskets they are filling with the fruit of the Tree of Life. We know this because we have cuneiform tablets and other writings of the mythologies giving testimony to this. If we want to be against Christmas trees, we can point out the waste of resources involved and the gross commercialism of the holiday in general and the terrible debt racked up that cannot be said to be done in the Name of our Messiah. But Christmas trees really aren’t more than five hundred years old and Germanic, not ancient Near Eastern. Let’s not use the Bible out of context in order to serve agendas—it is dangerous business and, I believe, disrespectful to the precious Word we have been gifted with. We can’t criticize people for saying, “That’s not what that means to me” and then turn around and do it ourselves. Okay, lecture over. Back to the text:

21 Remember these things, O Jacob, and Israel, for you are my servant; I formed you; you are my servant; O Israel, you will not be forgotten by me.
Remember what things? Well, the language isn’t entirely clear so we have a couple of choices. Either (1) He is telling them not to forget how ridiculous idols are. I am not extremely fond of that option, or (2) all the deliverances of the past that He has been reminding them of. Maybe that’s it. Or (3) what He tells them in His next breath—namely “you ARE my servant. I FORMED you.” Then he repeats “you are my servant” and then “you will not be forgotten by me.”

I think this is the right option because He tells them to remember and then He says they will not be forgotten. There is a definite chiastic structure here, which I can’t explain on the radio. I need charts and I could pretend to have a chart here but that would just be rude. So what is the result of not being forgotten by Yahweh?

22 I have blotted out your transgressions like a cloud and your sins like mist; return to me, for I have redeemed you.

I HAVE blotted out your transgressions, remember that is pescha, willful and rebellious high-handed offenses that are not covered by the sacrifices. That word translated as blotted out can also be translated swept away, which makes more sense when the process is being compared to dispersing a cloud. We also see included in all this that the chattat sins, the unintentional sins, being swept away like a mist. So we have Yahweh forgiving not only the greatest of their offenses but also the least—this is a total and complete forgiveness. Again, we keep coming across this radical grace that is being extended to the exiles, who certainly aren’t repentant before Him and most of them won’t even end up leaving exile—they will choose to stay, and those who do go back, a lot of these guys marry pagan women. Although we don’t see them engaging in idol worship again, Malachi has them doing plenty of other horrible things. And yet, God extends this amazing grace to them and forgives it all for His own sake, which He says repeatedly—not because they are deserving but because He created them to be His witnesses and unless He wipes the slate clean, He is not going to have any witnesses.

He says, “Return to me for I HAVE redeemed you.” Again, speaking of the future as though it is already a done deal. Although they cannot see their redemption, it is absolutely real. He is calling on them to acknowledge the reality of His salvation before they can even see it—while they are still wallowing in denial as to their culpability in this whole terrible mess.

And we just aren’t that much different today, are we! So often when something terrible happens to us we blame it on Satan, or on other people being jerks when really it is often the natural consequence of our own insufferable actions. We behave boorishly on social media, and they exile us from their wall by unfriending or blocking us, and we say “They can’t handle the truth!” Well, more likely they can’t handle our incessant caterwauling. No one wants to be preached at all the time in their own cyber living room and especially not by people who really don’t know as much as they think they do and aren’t as mature as they think they are. If we exhaust people, they are going to preserve their peace by giving us the boot. Nothing mysterious or mean-spirited and not necessarily an aversion to the truth—just an aversion to us. Well, that’s how the Israelites were treating Yahweh. They were sitting in a well-deserved exile, and first they called Yahweh blind and deaf to their rights, and then they feigned complete ignorance at having actually earned their exile—blaming in on His incompetence instead—and they didn’t worship Him in exile as they should have, but heaped their sins up in His face and yet He forgives because He is kinder, more patient, more everything good and grace-filled than we are. He is the God who remembers, and who forgives. He is just unreal.

 



Episode 38: Isaiah and the Messiah 5: Isaiah 43

This week, we will be covering Isaiah 43 which marks a dramatic turn in the action. We will be talking about regnal names in the ancient world and the polytheistic Law of Continuity that plagued the ancient world with beliefs that the gods are part of the system, and not outside it–leading pagan people into the belief that their gods could not do anything “outside the box.” Yahweh, on the other hand, is telling His people to stop thinking in terms of polytheistic limitations and realize that He is outside the system and can, therefore, do whatever He wants to save them and can use whoever He wants–and no one can stand in His way.

Transcript below–not super well edited so just ignore the small stuff.

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Isaiah and the Messiah Part 5—Isaiah 43

I really hope that you’ve been following along with the broadcasts but if not, I will review the main points so far. Isaiah 1-39 is largely doom and gloom with a few rays of light and a few historical vignettes—but mostly it is bad news for idolatrous Israel who is being warned that if they do not mend their ways, they will be going into exile—which of course happened in the sixth century BCE when the Babylonians leveled Jerusalem and the Temple Mount and took almost everyone east into exile. Isaiah 40-55 sets an entirely different tone, being written to those who have been suffering in exile. Throughout, we see them being comforted, rebuked, promised deliverance, rebuked again, we see the nations and their idols repeatedly being caricatured and mocked as ludicrous and powerless to stop Yahweh’s plans to deliver His people from exile—something new and impossible that has never happened historically before. We have a number of players and voices—Yahweh, Isaiah, the two Heavenly council members, Israel the blind and deaf servant, the nations and their gods, the coming Warrior from the East who will be Yahweh’s mode of deliverance—and, last week, another servant who instead of being blind and deaf, removes blindness, the one who brings the law to the ends of the earth, and yet does not break a bruised weed or snuff out a smoldering wick—the one whom Rabbi David Kimchi, Abarbanel and some of the targums identify as the Messiah—the man who is the ideal representative of Israel.

The action has moved from the Heavenly council to the courtroom—where most of the action of these chapters takes place. Yahweh has put the nations and their gods on trial to prove that they are truly gods, and the result can be very comical. Interspersed between the courtroom scenes are idol polemics and reminders/rebukes toward Israel to have faith and to get a grip and to finally come to terms with the fact that the exile was Yahweh’s will and not a failure on His part to protect the rights of His people. There is also a constant theme of the spiritual blindness and deafness of Israel and the nations and a promise of a new exodus out of Babylon and back into Israel. And we are going through all of this just to set the stage for the Gospel of Mark, which will draw heavily on this material to illuminate the ministry of the Messiah.

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 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.

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.

When we left off last week, Yahweh was really laying down the law and making it very clear that exile was the consequence of their own actions yet, despite seventy years of hardship, they still weren’t seeing the truth. We need to review those verses because the first verse of Chapter 43 begins with “But now…” and “but now…” means that there was previously a “then” that will be contrasted with the new material about to be introduced.

24 Who gave up Jacob to the looter, and Israel to the plunderers? Was it not the Lord, against whom we have sinned, in whose ways they would not walk, and whose law they would not obey?
25 So he poured on him the heat of his anger and the might of battle; it set him on fire all around, but he did not understand; it burned him up, but he did not take it to heart.

As a review, Israel has been in exile for somewhere around seventy years, but they are still mistakenly believing that they are a conquered people only because Yahweh Himself was conquered by Babylon’s gods. Somehow, He let them down and so Isaiah is assuring them here that no, it is the result of their sin and the exile was Yahweh’s will, not His failing. What follows at the beginning of chapter 43 is just insanely stunning, despite not getting the big picture about the reasons for His wrath and who is to blame, He makes a 180 degree turn:

43 But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel:
“Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.

Remember we talked about salvation oracles? They prophetically speak of speak of deliverance and redemption in the future as though they are already a done deal and often contain the phrase “fear not!” Well, this one is a doozy.  Yahweh reminds Israel of who He is as their creator, and says, “I HAVE redeemed you”—speaking of the future as though it has already happened because when God makes a promise, it is a done deal and we just wait for the promise to manifest as something concrete, but the result is no longer in doubt.

I have called you by name—if you have read King, Kingdom, Citizen you will recognize this phrase as an ancient adoption formula. A man would take a child and name that child and it was as though he/she was a natural born son or daughter. We see this, actually, in the Gospel of Matthew when Joseph names Yeshua/Jesus.

2 When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.

We have some obvious Exodus imagery that is going to continue through the rest of the chapter, with the passing through the waters, and Jordan imagery with passing through the rivers.

Okay, just wow. Yahweh is calling them redeemed, but is this some sort of prosperity Gospel promise now where nothing terrible will ever happen to them again? No way—“WHEN you pass through the waters…and the rivers…and WHEN you walk through the fire”—not if but when. Not, “you won’t have to pass through crises” but “when you pass through crises.” This isn’t the kind of redemption we long to hear about, right? Anyway, they will go through trials of many kinds, but they will be preserved because they belong to Yahweh. Always have, always will. They just have to be spanked regularly—and don’t we all?

3 For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior…

Alright, this is self-explanatory but we are going to go through it because it pops up a number of times in this chapter, slightly altered in the later occurrences and I want you to notice—I am Yahweh your God—and he is uniquely the God of Israel from its formal and legal institution as a people at Sinai. The Holy One of Israel—when you see the phrase “holy one” popping up it is in reference to Yahweh teaching them (Israel) the right way to live under His covenant. Your Savior—the word is Moschia’—and it is, in context here, referring to the promised deliverance from exile. No one else is going to save them—not even King Cyrus. Cyrus is a tool in the hands of God, one that is being used. Cyrus’s gods are not responsible for his victories, as we have seen throughout, they are discredited as nothing, unable to do anything. It was Yahweh who acted in the first exodus, and He will again be responsible for this new thing, and no other god can thwart His plans. Now—here is where it gets weird and it is a head scratcher.

…I give Egypt as your ransom, Cush and Seba in exchange for you.
4 Because you are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you, I give men in return for you,
    peoples in exchange for your life.

Going to be honest here—a lot of scholars have a lot of theories but no one has “the“ answer. If it was just Egypt, this could be hearkening to the past, to the death of the firstborn—but Cush and Seba? This is definitely bartering language, pretty much everyone agrees on that and as such is very Middle Eastern—like Abraham bartering with God over the fate of Sodom. But this isn’t something that we have any historical records of ever happening. Might be just saying, “I will do whatever it takes” but I honestly can’t give you a hard answer. There is no consensus, just theories. And that’s okay. The folks who wrote it are dead.

5 Fear not, for I am with you; I will bring your offspring from the east, and from the west I will gather you.
6 I will say to the north, Give up, and to the south, Do not withhold; bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth,
7 everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.”

We’ve been talking over the last month about “ends of the earth” language and here is another installment to be added to the coastlands, islands, and ends of the earth—references to the four cardinal compass points—north, south, east and west.

And we can see the salvation oracle continues—“fear not!” along with a promise that they are indeed not hopelessly scattered—Yahweh will return them to the Land. Nothing, not nations or other gods, or armies or anything and not even distance can keep Yahweh from delivering His people from exile. And He says something interesting here about those who are called by His Name, that they are created for His glory. And we are going to see in a minute here how they are to function as vessels of His glory—namely, as His witnesses in the earth. Because of this—for the sake of His glory, they must be restored from exile—or else Yahweh looks powerless and shamed. He must have witnesses. Remember, we are still in the midst of a courtroom drama going on here. This is just an interlude with Yahweh conferring with His witnesses.

8 Bring out the people who are blind, yet have eyes, who are deaf, yet have ears!

Who is this being spoken to? Blind Israel of Isaiah 42:18-20 and 6:9-10 or the blind nations of Psalm 115 and referenced in the idol polemics here in Isaiah? We have to read forward to find out. No guessing allowed!

9 All the nations gather together, and the peoples assemble. Who among them can declare this, and show us the former things? Let them bring their witnesses to prove them right,
    and let them hear and say, It is true.

Aha! The blind ones being referenced are the nations and their gods again, the same ones commanded to come into the court room to present their arguments back in Isaiah 41. Time and again, and we saw this last week, their gods are challenged to declare the future and to show how they have successfully predicted past events. Their worshipers are called to be witnesses to their prowess in being above and beyond the system and not just part of it. That’s a big part of idolatrous religions—their gods are part of the system, tied to it, but they didn’t create it. They don’t exist outside of the system like Yahweh does. Yahweh is unique, and apart from Him there was no ancient conception of any god like Him in any way, shape or form. Again, He makes His challenge and once more we are invited to listen to the sound of silence and crickets as they are left without evidence and quite speechless.

So Yahweh turns to Israel. See how complex it is with all the voices and no stage directions??? Ancient writing is nothing like modern writing.

10 “You are my witnesses,” declares the Lord, “and my servant whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he….

So He turns to them and declares that they are the witnesses of all He has done, past, present and future. They were chosen, as servants in the earth, for the sole purpose of witnessing all He has done in the earth. We could say that they are a living monument to the reality of Yahweh, and thus, to the reality that there are no other gods in heaven or on earth intervening in the affairs of mankind. He is without rival and without equal and they do not have to worry about anything getting in the way of their redemption.

…Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me.

Like I said, Yahweh does not exist within the polytheistic worldview, no god was created before Him because He is the Creator of the system—He isn’t bound by the timetable He created for us to exist in. The gods were only considered to be a part of the system and although there were stories about the creation of the earth, there were no stories outside the Bible about the creation of all things and creation being separate from God Himself.

11 I, I am the Lord, and besides me there is no savior.

Hear that double emphatic “I”? It’s important. He is re-emphasizing that He is their only reality and everything they have been scared of over the last seventy or so years is nothing. Savior, again, is moschia. AND I forgot to mention last time what moschiach means—a moschiach is someone who steps in when someone else is unable to defend themselves. Shows up quite a bit in Deuteronomy and Judges, no shock there. Put in other words, “Stop looking at Babylon and their gods as though you are at their mercy, I and my plans for your redemption are your only hope and the outcome is not in question. It’s a done deal.”

12 I declared and saved and proclaimed, when there was no strange god among you; and you are my witnesses,” declares the Lord, “and I am God.
13 Also henceforth I am he; there is none who can deliver from my hand; I work, and who can turn it back?”

Yahweh has been openly challenging the gods of the nations and their worshipers to declare, to save and to proclaim and there has been only silence—and yet Yahweh is reminding His people that He was making proclamations of deliverance long before they or practically anyone else had ever even heard about Babylon’s gods, when they were a backwater non-entity on the rear end of southern Mesopotamia. And the sad thing—He is saying that they are His witnesses. They know about the original Exodus story. They know about all the miracles, and they should know better than to think He can’t do it again. “Henceforth, I am He” He says –in other words, it is all going to happen again and no one can do anything about it.

14 Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: “For your sake I send to Babylon and bring them all down as fugitives, even the Chaldeans, in the ships in which they rejoice.
15 I am the Lord, your Holy One, the Creator of Israel, your King.

We have a second proclamation here of His royal names—whenever you see this sort of thing we are dealing with what are known as Regnal names—we also see it in Isaiah 9:6

For to us a child is born,
    to us a son is given;
and the government shall be upon his shoulder,
    and his name shall be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
    Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

We also see this in Isaiah 7 with the regnal name “Immanuel”—they are titles. I have seen some folks claim that Yeshua/Jesus cannot be the Messiah because His Name needed to be Immanuel, but that is not correct. Queen Victoria’s real Name was not Victoria, it was Alexandrina—Victoria was a symbolic name. All ancient Kings had them and, in fact, the Psalms use son of David as a general regnal name for all of the kings that issued from David.

But, I digress, back to the verses sandwiched around Babylon’s fate, we have “Yahweh, your redeemer, the Holy One of Israel” and “Yahweh, your Holy One, Creator of Israel, your King” and although these may seem like they are saying the same thing, they are not. First we have God’s personal Name, and a title of “your redeemer (goal)” a kinship term for the close relative that saves one from ruin, and the Holy One of Israel which, as we discussed before—refers to Yahweh being the One who sets forth the righteous way of life—something that, if Israel had heeded, they would not be in exile in the first place. That’s the first slice of bread in the sandwich, and the second is Yahweh, YOUR Holy One—making His role as lawgiver and guide entirely personal and intimate, Creator of Israel—marking Him as the only god in history to Create a nation, and “your King”—which is all about the allegiance they owe Him as absolute sovereign. And these are important regnal names, vital titles to understanding His relational role with Israel.

In between these, Yahweh speaks again about Babylon’s fate—He will send Cyrus (still unnamed until chapter 44) to Babylon and they will be carted off as fugitives in the very ships they used in their own conquests. Poetic justice, for sure. And speaking of poetry, remember we had a hint of original Exodus language a while back? Nothing subtle about the next verses.

16 Thus says the Lord, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters,
17 who brings forth chariot and horse, army and warrior; they lie down, they cannot rise, they are extinguished, quenched like a wick:

This is interesting—not only is Yahweh referencing the destruction of Pharaoh’s army of chariots in the Yam Suf, He is taking credit for having personally led them to their deaths, as though He commanded them to follow Israel. It is an awesome thing to imagine and one of the most compelling pictures in history—probably second only to the Cross and the empty Tomb.

18 “Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old.

But wait! He says, “Don’t even think about that old stuff. Don’t look at all that in the past with longing.”

Does He actually mean not to remember the Exodus? Nonsense, the Bible commands that the Passover always be remembered throughout the generations. So what is He saying here?

19 Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.

Remember last week we talked about the inability of ancient peoples to imagine anything new being done. All of creation was locked into an endless repeating cycle where the unexpected just didn’t occur. No one could do anything that hadn’t been done before—it’s called the law of continuity. It’s all part and parcel of why the pagan gods were part of the system and not the creators of it, because that would mean that at some point there wasn’t a system at all. Impossible! But because Yahweh is outside of the system yet intimately responsible for it and involved with it, He is not bound to these restrictions. He can do a new thing—or in this case, an old thing (redemption) in a new way (through a pagan king). He is telling them to open their minds to the reality that He is not a slave to the system but instead the Creator of and Master over it. He can save them any way He wants—and He has chosen to do it in a shocking way through this pagan king whom no one knows about at this point. He says, “I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” Obviously exodus language here as that is exactly what He did under Moses, Aaron and Miriam.

20 The wild beasts will honor me, the jackals and the ostriches, for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people,
21   the people whom I formed for myself that they might declare my praise.

Yahweh is saying that their redemption will be so thrilling, their spiritual renewal so amazing, that all of Creation will rejoice as they witness the return of Israel to the Land. He even reiterates why He made them—to give Him praise. But, we have a but coming up, a big but in the form of a “Yet you…” and that can’t be good. And it sounded so promising, right?

22 “Yet you did not call upon me, O Jacob; but you have been weary of me, O Israel!

Here we have a parallelism, saying the same thing twice but using different words. “You did not call upon me” is equated with “you have been weary of me” just as Jacob is equated with Israel. How utterly heartbreaking! The creatures of the desert will cry out in praise and worship of the Creator as the exiles return home, but Israel in exile has not worshiped or publicly honored God in any way. Apart, of course, from a few examples—there is always a faithful remnant in every generation. But Israel, by and large, was not living up to the purpose for which they were created. Yahweh has a list of charges against them:

23 You have not brought me your sheep for burnt offerings, or honored me with your sacrifices. I have not burdened you with offerings, or wearied you with frankincense.
24 You have not bought me sweet cane with money, or satisfied me with the fat of your sacrifices.

In other words, they have done nothing that would show Him even a shred of honor in the ancient world, and if they aren’t doing the external things, they certainly aren’t giving Him their hearts—which is what He has always wanted. Pagan gods just wanted to be cared for and revered—they didn’t care about being loved. Yahweh doesn’t need to be cared for, He wants to be revered and loved. What He has wanted from the beginning, and this is why He created the garden in Eden, is table fellowship with mankind and when the sacrfices, the korbanot, are discussed in Scripture, they are always presented in terms of a shared meal or a food offering.  This is intimacy, at best, and a restoration of broken relationships, at worst—but it was never supposed to be a “going grudgingly through the motions” sort of deal. God has never wanted or needed fake worship. God is not a burden, but a lifter of burdens—and He always wanted His people to see that about Him.

But you have burdened me with your sins; you have wearied me with your iniquities.

Whoa—you haven’t lifted a finger to worship me because you were tired of me but you sure made me deal with your issues. Sin, when we see it in Scripture, is translated from chattat and transgressions are how we translate avon—and by “we” I mean people who are actually fluent in Hebrew and not me. There are three types of sins listed in Scripture, and I am going to lift an illustration from my good friend Ryan White of Faith in Messiah ministries and I absolutely recommend his video teaching on sin and sacrifice in ancient Israel—I recommend subscribing to his teaching site. He is quite possibly the best Bible teacher I know. But don’t tell him I told you that or I will have to kill him.

Anyway, he tells this fictional story about his three sons—of course, this was when he had three sons and now he has five but as there are only really four categories of sin in the Bible, and we’re only going to talk about three in this story—we are going to ignore the two youngest.

Anyway, so his youngest son comes in the room and finds cookies on the counter and he takes one and eats it. His dad comes in and scolds him for taking a cookie without asking but that’s about as far as it can go because this was just chattat—unintentional sin. The boy wasn’t thinking about it, he saw a cookie and he took it and ate it and wasn’t considering the implications. It was wrong, but there was no intention of doing wrong. That is chattat—translated sin.

Now, his next boy is older and knows from experience that he is not allowed to take a cookie without permission. But no one is in the room, and they smell so good. He tries and tries to resist and he knows it would be wrong to take one but he gets caught up in the moment and gives into temptation and takes a cookie and hides and eats it. He feels bad about it, but temptation just got the best of him. That is avon—translated iniquity. Whereas chattat sin doesn’t have that burden of guilt, chattat is intentional and does. When his dad finds out, there will be consequences and the relationship of trust will have to be restored.

But then, in comes the oldest son and his dad is right there in the room. He knows experientially that there are no circumstances under which it would be right to take the cookie, but he sneers at his dad, looking him straight in the eye, walks over to the counter and takes the cookie and eats it right in front of his dad. This is a willful rebellious act of contempt—called high-handed sin in some writings. This is called pescha in the Hebrew and is translated as transgression. It represents a serious breach of relationship and is not covered by sacrifices. You can’t be happy and prideful about your sin and get it forgiven.

Disclaimer—I know Ryan’s kids and they are all nice boys and the oldest would never have done this. Events in this story are fictitious and do not reflect actual events.

So, back to the verse—Yahweh is saying that they have burdened Him with unintentional offenses (they are clearly ignorant of what He wants) and wearied Him with things they know are wrong but do anyway. But the next verse is meant to knock everyone over.

25 “I, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.

Whoa—He just said that he was kinda sick of their antics on the lower level offenses and then He flat out turns around and says that He is going to forgive their willful rebellious ones. Say what? And that he is doing it for His own sake—not for theirs.

Ever have a relationship with someone who is a hot mess? Abusive? Whatever? Ever just forgive their horrifying behavior and go forward because it is the only way to be in relationship with them? Well, I can’t say that I really have. I avoid people like that as much as possible. But Yahweh? Right here He flat out extends a stunning amount of grace toward undeserving Israel—and everything they did in Israel to ignore and rebel against Him? It’s going to just let it slide. He will blot it out. Unreal.

But then we see this, seemingly out of nowhere and we are back to the courtroom scene and Yahweh has His own witnesses on the stand, disputing with them as though they have just said, “But we didn’t sin against you! We didn’t do anything to deserve this exile!”

26 Put me in remembrance; let us argue together; set forth your case, that you may be proved right.
27 Your first father sinned, and your mediators transgressed against me.

He’s saying, “Think back, present your case to me, Prove to me your innocence. You’ve been sinning against me since Abraham, Moses and Aaron. If they sinned against me, with as faithful as they were, what chance do you have of proving your innocence?”
And the last verse, because of verb tense, is puzzling.

28 Therefore I will profane the princes of the sanctuary, and deliver Jacob to utter destruction
    and Israel to reviling.

It’s speaking of the judgment against Jerusalem and the Temple as though it is future, and although it will happen again in the future, after the return from exile, hundreds of years later—still, it seems oddly placed. The Tree of Life Version even goes so far as to change the verb tenses to past tense and render it:

So I profaned the Sanctuary officials, and gave Jacob over to destruction,   and Israel to scorn.

I am actually inclined to agree with this, but only because of the opening verses of Chapter 44, which pop up next, saying, “But now…” followed by yet another salvation oracle. But that being said, maybe it is talking about the destruction of the Second Temple forty years after the rejection and crucifixion of Yeshua by the Jerusalem elites through the agency of the Romans. In that case, the “but now” means “that’s in the future..but right now this is what I am doing to redeem you.” Could be. It’s an either/or situation.

Next week we will talk about Isaiah 44:1-22 or 23 and we will be covering what I think is the longest and most detailed idol polemic in Scripture and we will compare it to Jeremiah 10, Habbakuk 2, and the Babylonian Erra Epic. Jeremiah 10 is often used, incompletely quoted, to make it sound like it is talking about a Christmas Tree—when Babylonians had nothing of the sort and throughout the ancient world you didn’t cut down fertility symbols because, well, then they weren’t fertility symbols anymore. First rule of Sacred Tree Club is “Don’t cut down the sacred tree.” Christmas Trees are really only hundreds of years old and not thousands of years old and originated in Europe, not Asia. Ancient people would be just scandalized at our wasting of trees. If anything, it’s actually anti-pagan. But we’ll talk about that next week and the week after that, we are going to have a history lesson on King Cyrus because it will help us understand Is 44:24-45:14.

 



Episode 35: Isaiah and the Messiah 2: Idolatry in Ancient Israel and During the Exile

Big thanks to our first podcast supporter! Thanks to Tamar! Just this last week I spent a bunch of money on new context books, so I appreciate the support.

This week we’re going to explore the ancient Near Eastern world of polytheism and henotheism (the religion of pre-monotheistic Israel) in order to understand why the prophet Isaiah is having so much trouble convincing the exiled Jews that they really can trust God and that the idols of the nations are nothing. What were idols? Were they actually gods? What does it mean for a god to be jealous? Why didn’t they believe that God could save them? What are cosmic functions and how did the concept of regional authority work?

This is all incredibly important foundational information for discussing the disputations and idol polemics that we find throughout Isaiah 40-55 and without this knowledge, it is very easy to make some wrong assumptions based on the faulty modern views of paganism put forth by the new age/Wiccan movement.

Transcript below, not really very edited so please forgive grammar and spelling mistakes

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As I was writing my lessons on Isaiah chapters 41 and 42, it occurred to me that I needed to lay some serious foundations as to what the faith of ancient Israel actually was during the monarchy and exile—what their mindset was and their view of reality. It can be very difficult to relate to the ancient Israelites at times because we were born into a largely monotheistic world. We look at what happened at Sinai with the golden calf, and during the time of the Judges, and the downward spiral of I and II Kings and we wonder how on earth they could not understand that they were breaking the first commandment to have no other gods before YHVH. Why didn’t they see a problem with worshiping Yahweh and other gods on the side?

But the ancients didn’t think the way we do – and the word monotheism (the exclusive worship and recognition of the existence of only one ultimate God) didn’t exist. The closest approximation to monotheism in the ancient world was actually atheism – because a belief in and worship of only one god just didn’t make any sense to the people of the ancient world.

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 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.

In Isaiah 40-55 we see this common theme, as we will cover more in the upcoming weeks, of Yahweh having to challenge the belief of His people that He was unable to save them because He had been (1) defeated by the Babylonian gods and (2) He had no authority outside of Israel anyway. And this was a very reasonable assumption in the ancient world, this was how they looked at things. Monotheism was crazy and weird. But what were the Israelites? If they weren’t monotheists then what is the alternative? Polytheists? Monolaters? Henotheists? Let’s go through each and use the Biblical account to see where they lined up.

So, what was the norm? Why so many gods? And how did the ancients view their gods?

Gods and goddesses were all about function and dominion. Someone had to be responsible for the rain and it certainly couldn’t be the same one responsible for the sunshine because the functions of sun and rain were entirely different. Therefore, in their minds, there just had to be more than one god and in the case of the Hittites, thousands of them. This is the basis of polytheism, which is the recognition and worship of many gods – gods who are not jealous in nature and who do not demand exclusive allegiance. In other words, Marduk doesn’t care if you are seeing Ishtar on the side and she doesn’t care if you are seeing Enki. In fact, they expected you to. Marduk was the national god, supporting kingship, and Ishtar was the goddess of prostitution and war, and Enki was the god of wisdom. You can’t just neglect one, all of them had to be honored of society would fall apart.

The polytheistic gods were entirely different from the God of A, I & J. One – they were not moral in nature. They had no set standards of conduct that you had to live up to, no knowable expectations – and so the people who worshiped them had no idea whatsoever how to please or displease them. In the polytheistic world, if you made a god angry, then bad things started happening to you. The problem was – which god did you make angry and how did you do it? There was absolutely no way to know for sure, and so in the ancient cuneiform tablets, we see an account of a woman desperately seeking forgiveness but who has no idea what she has done.

If you were being cursed by an unknown god, it was serious business. You had to start repenting of everything you can think of, to every god imaginable. You had to start making the “sacrificial tour” – trying to appease these gods whom you have supposedly done something to offend. Your friends avoid you because they don’t want the gods angry at them by association.

Now – I want you to maybe consider the book of Job in a new light because Job is worded in a really interesting way. With the exception of the very beginning and the very end when the actual actions of YHVH are being discussed, the actual name of God is only mentioned twice in Job 12:9 and 28:28 – both times by Job:

Who knoweth not in all these that the hand of the Lord hath wrought this?

And unto man he said, Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding.

Every other reference is to the generic term God or Elohim and most folks assume that the God of AI &J was being referred to but in re-reading it, I see two different pictures of God being presented – one from the ANE polytheistic mindset of a god whose standards are unknown and must be appeased and the other in line with YHVH, whose standards can be known and which Job knows he has not transgressed.  Like the account of the woman who doesn’t know who the heck she offended or how, Job’s friends are desperately trying to get him to repent for whatever he has done – after all, in the ANE, community was everything, and Job was placing them all in jeopardy by refusing to just admit to a whole bunch of things that he hasn’t even done. So as the chapters wear on and Job keeps protesting his innocence, his friends get more and more determined that he has done something to deserve all this trouble, and Job gets more and more belligerent until their accusations finally lead Job into a place where he makes the mistake of saying that he, and not God, is in the right. But it all comes down to clashing world views and different ideas about God and gods. This was the ANE world.

Another reason that we struggle with understanding Israel’s continual fall into idolatry is because we do not understand faith in the ancient world. Nowadays we have these nice little boxes where we compartmentalize our lives – making a differentiation between sacred and secular, but in the ancient world, there was no such division. That division is very modern. There was no such thing as religion in the ancient world because every aspect of life was religious. There was the ever-present ancestral worship that we see in the story of Laban and Rachel – the teraphim she took would have been the representation of Laban’s ancestors and the caring for those idols was a very grave responsibility that Laban would have taken very seriously. Losing these idols would have been beyond traumatic for the entire family.

This next part is vital to understanding the hyperbole (exaggeration) and idol polemics in Isaiah. We often think that the ancients viewed their idols as gods, but nothing could be further from the truth – the idols were simply representations of the god, which the people could care for and in so doing, care for the god. These idols were oftentimes dressed in the morning, fed, given drink, bathed, oiled, and put to bed. In this way, they thought that they were caring for the god – freeing up the god to do their cosmic jobs and contributing to the general order and well-being of the world. A happy god, after all, is a non-interfering god and they didn’t really want the gods interfering in their lives because they were too unpredictable and amoral (as opposed to immoral—at least immoral gods would always do something bad, amoral gods are unpredictable) to be trusted. This caring for idols would have been normal and unquestioned by the mixed multitude that came out of Egypt and probably to the Israelites as well. Aaron, somehow, knew how to make an idol and did not seem to protest that the making of that idol would be breaking the covenant. That right there is our first clue as to what was going on in the minds of the Israelites and why they seemed unable to really grasp what was being demanded of them.

You see, polytheism is more than simply the worship of many gods – it is to have gods who don’t even remotely care if you are seeing other gods on the side. The worship of the main city god in the ancient world was the job of the priests and kings, the common people worshiped the household gods – they had pantry gods (snakes to keep the mice away), ancestral teraphim, the god of the hearth and a number of other minor deities. It may very well be that the rank and file Israelites, despite the commandment to only worship One God, felt that paying attention to the minor deities didn’t really count as a transgression. Maybe they only considered it super bad when something happened like when King Ahaz actually replaced the altar of Yahweh in the Temple with a replica of the altar he saw and made sacrifices on when he was in Damascus.

Now, I am not excusing them, but I am trying to explain how the ancients saw the world of the divine and what they had to overcome – and why, once they were in the Land, they were commanded not to associate with the Canaanites at all, ever.  The Canaanites had gods of the hills and gods of the valleys, gods of the harvest and gods for this and for that and the temptation would be very great to bow down and worship those gods and serve them if one was concerned that the harvest wasn’t going to come in, or if enemies attacked and you wanted the favor of the regional deities in battle. This is why the commandment was given in Deut 12 not to learn the ways of the peoples of the Land – because this was their approach to life and it was very tempting to follow them into it during times of testing and trial.

And the temptation has always been there to describe the religion of the Israelites as having always been monotheistic but truthfully until after the exile it never was. Israel was always worshiping other gods on the side – even King David had an idol in his home.

I Sam 19:13 And Michal took an image, and laid it in the bed, and put a pillow of goats’ hair for his bolster, and covered it with a cloth.

Solomon, who started out so well, was influenced by his wives to build temples to all of their gods – temples which remained until the days of Josiah and the great Covenant Renewal during his reign. We see good kings forever having to tear down idols and high places, and bad kings building them back up again. At one point, there was even idolatry going on in the very temple of God as we see in Ezekiel 8, the chapter that got me started studying all this in the first place back in 2015.

10 So I went in and saw; and behold every form of creeping things, and abominable beasts, and all the idols of the house of Israel, portrayed upon the wall round about.

11 And there stood before them seventy men of the ancients of the house of Israel, and in the midst of them stood Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan, with every man his censer in his hand; and a thick cloud of incense went up.

14 Then he brought me to the door of the gate of the Lord’s house which was toward the north; and, behold, there sat women weeping for Tammuz.

16 And he brought me into the inner court of the Lord’s house, and, behold, at the door of the temple of the Lord, between the porch and the altar, were about five and twenty men, with their backs toward the temple of the Lord, and their faces toward the east; and they worshipped the sun toward the east.

Now in verses 3 and 5 it refers to images of jealousy – which of course is absolutely unique to YHVH. No other god would have been jealous as long as they themselves were also worshiped. But Yahweh is exclusive and brooks no competition.

And yet the overwhelming majority of people really seemed to have no problem with this whatsoever. The reason for that is something called “henotheism” – the primary worship of one of a group of gods, while not denying the others, or necessarily ignoring them. Because of this mindset – idolatry was tolerated and even flourished. After all, this system put YHVH at the top of the pyramid, but while recognizing the other “gods” as minor deities and so Israel saw herself as faithful even though she was committing spiritual adultery. In the henotheistic mindset, it is okay to also acknowledge Ba’al or Ashtoreth as regional gods with local control as long as the main focus of your worship is YHVH. Obviously, to us at least, this was not acceptable to the one true God.

Monolatry is very similar to henotheism and it is what we see in Mormonism – the belief that there are many gods but it is only acceptable to worship one. The other gods have no jurisdiction and therefore they are not to be worshiped. Monolatry is exclusive polytheism – you can only worship one god but there are a great many.

So, Henotheism, and not monotheism, is what we see going on in Ancient Israel. Whereas other nations only worshiped their own gods and were therefore polytheistic, Israel worshiped YHVH AND the gods of all the other nations around them to varying degrees of severity over the years. In this way, they were far more unfaithful than the nations around them and this was why they were repeatedly called on the table for whoredom. The Moabites weren’t worshiping the Egyptian gods and the Egyptians weren’t worshiping the Phoenician gods – everyone but Israel worshiped their own gods. Now, the Egyptians recognized the Phoenician gods and the Moabite gods as being absolutely real, but they weren’t the gods of the Egyptians – they were centered in other countries and therefore weren’t really a concern.

So, idolatry in Israel didn’t start with Solomon, he simply made an existing situation far worse. In fact, it would seem that as soon as Joshua, Caleb and those who conquered the land died – Israel immediately started doing things according to the ways of the Canaanites that they had failed to drive out.

And so, I want to talk about the differences between YHVH and the gods of the Nations, because there is talk out in the secular scholarly world that monotheism was the natural evolution of religion. Quite the contrary, there was no evolution at all – it was commanded and resisted until exile drove the Jews to the realization that YHVH meant business and would not tolerate it anymore. And even during the exile, as we will see in our Isaiah studies, they still had to be convinced.

The gods of the nations were like us – they had beginnings and endings. They were born and they reproduced and sometimes they were even conquered by other gods and died. So, when you hear someone say, “Where did God come from” that is very much an ANE mindset. Like the people of the ANE world, they did not operate according to any wrong vs right code of conduct. Not that the people didn’t have laws for ordered living, mind you, but their gods weren’t scolding them for immorality. They were functional gods – each god having a jurisdiction and unable to go outside of it. The gods operated within a large community of gods, and they fought and debated and made decisions. Their job was to run their own particular cosmic functions – keeping everything in order. Nothing was more important to the ANE mind than order, because the opposite of that was chaos in the form of famine, drought, pestilence, barrenness, and death. The only reason that the people of the ancient world believed they were created was to do all the work for the gods, who were bored after having created the world and wanted to be cared for. Therefore, as I mentioned before, the priests and kings were responsible for taking care of the major city deities. The common people never bothered with them, but instead took care of their own household gods. As long as Ba’al was taken care of by the priests – given food and drink – he was free to manage the agricultural fertility of the land. If he was not taken care of, he might get distracted and everyone could die of hunger.

YHVH, on the other hand, did all the work of Creation not for Himself but for the people He was creating. Instead of creating a race of slaves to take care of Him, He took care of the needs of the people and created for them a day of rest. He had absolute standards of right and wrong, so his people knew whether or not they had transgressed – he cared for the least of these and not just the heroes and kings. So, from Gen 1 we see a God diametrically opposed to the ANE gods. As I mentioned before, He is jealous, unlike ANE gods. He doesn’t break His own rules, unlike ANE gods. He has no beginning and no end; He doesn’t need to be fed or dressed; He doesn’t need other gods to help him with the functioning of the universe. He refuses to allow His creation to create an idol to represent Him. However, that doesn’t mean that He can’t create a human being to represent Him and place His spirit in.

YHVH is the absolute antithesis of everything that was being worshiped in the ancient world and so, although the accounts of ancient myths might have literary similarities to the scriptures, and follow the patterns of the time, the information the bible conveys is generally the exact opposite. YHVH used the literary conventions of the day to say things like, “Okay, I want you to see me being enthroned in Genesis 1 and I want you to see the blueprint of who I am relationally to my people and so I am using this recognized literary style, but in the midst of it, I am going to show you how entirely different I am than every false god.”

And in Isaiah, we come across a number of paradigms that the Israelites had been living with for over a thousand years. Yahweh spends chapters and chapters addressing this mindset—not that there were chapters when He did it, but you know what I mean.

First up, in the ancient world, when one country defeated another country it was actually a case of one country’s gods defeating the other country’s gods. So, in the eyes of the people, the Babylonian gods were mightier than Yahweh and they proved it not only when they conquered Jerusalem and led away His people into exile, but even moreso when they destroyed His Temple. In their minds, they weren’t seeing and hearing what the prophets had been saying (well, some were but not most) about how Yahweh was going to hand them over for destruction, and the city, and His temple because they had made everything so disgusting that He couldn’t stand it anymore and He was literally going to use the Babylonian Empire as a janitorial service. Break down the walls, deport the people so they can’t defile the Land anymore, and burn Solomon’s Temple and the palace he built right beside it up on the Temple Mount, to the ground. But we will see in chapter 42 or 43, can’t remember right now, that they still don’t get the picture that this exile wasn’t Yahweh being conquered, but their punishment! It’s wild!

And we will see that they weren’t publicly worshiping Him in exile either! They were treating Him like an absentee, defeated god. Yahweh repeatedly reassures them that He is going to do what no gods has ever done before—restore a defeated nation from exile. He tells them that the upcoming deliverance will be more glorious than the Exodus out of Egypt. He makes a ton of stunning predictions which brings us to the next point about the gods of the nations—they didn’t make prophetic predictions. Oh sure, there are legends of the Oracle at Delphi delivering vague predictions that could go either way, and stories about pronouncements in literature, but we have zero religious literature referring to any pagan gods predicting what would happen in the future and having it come to pass. So we need to learn about the “law of continuity” in order to explain this.

The law of continuity, in a nutshell, says that nothing ever changes. Life goes on as it always has. And in the ancient world, it was pretty much true. The concept of a “new thing” was just foreign in the extreme. No nation had ever been delivered and restored from exile, therefore no country can ever be delivered and restored from exile. It is why Pharaoh wasn’t scared of Yahweh’s threats. It’s why Israel in exile had lost hope and had to be not only encouraged but also re-educated. Yahweh had lost. He was gone, off in Israel far away and powerless, shamed. They had no protector, they had no nation and no hope. Life was pretty good in Babylon and they were prospering even though they were a conquered people. Better to just give up and learn to like it. And so, starting next week in Isaiah 41, Yahweh is going to start making some startling predictions and He will literally be challenging the gods of the nations to a prediction duel—here’s what I say will happen, what do you say will happen? Hello? Hey, say something, do something! Anything! No? Didn’t think so!

Another thing you need to realize as we are going through the idol polemics is that they do not paint an accurate picture of idolatry in the ancient world—and they weren’t supposed to. Isaiah wasn’t going for historical accuracy here, this was a polemic designed to portray the polytheists as ridiculous. It is mocking the mindset and the practices of the ancient world by twisting what they were doing out of context but in a way that highlights the fact that idols cannot compete with Yahweh in any way, shape, or form. Isaiah knew what real idolatry looked like. He knew how it worked and He knew what the priests were thinking and doing—everyone did. Writing a boring treatise on that wouldn’t have convinced anyone how silly it is. As it was, it made sense to them and so he had to create a sort of Frankenstein’s monster out of it, real and yet grotesque—a caricature of the real thing. Because the real thing looked pretty reasonable to them. Remember, these were the children and grandchildren of idolaters, not of monotheists.

It is so important to understand literature types and especially when reading the prophets. Isaiah is largely lyrical poetry, peppered with polemics and disputations and historical accounts. When people take a verse out of context and fail to explain the literary genre of the passage, it is very easy to make that verse mean something entirely different than it was intended to mean and nowhere do we see that more than with the idol polemics. I have seen them used in order to discount Yeshua/Jesus as the Messiah, when, in context, they have nothing to do with the existence of a divine Messiah at all and are only applicable to the idols that the Israelites are fearing and crediting with more power than Yahweh. But it takes a lot of time and effort to learn to read the different literary styles of Isaiah and either the people who are misrepresenting it honestly haven’t studied it in this sort of literary and historical context, or they are just blinded by agenda—because nowhere in Isaiah does it disqualify a Messiah being born to embody the Spirit of Yahweh and deliver His people and the nations as His strong right arm, and quite the opposite. This is why I am taking the time to teach it all line by line and making sure that everyone understands the context, and when to and not to take verb tenses literally (in poetic works it can be tricky) and to understand why the Gospel writers, and the Qumran community, and David Kimhi and Abarbanel and others saw the Messiah in Isaiah. It is worth taking the time to do this. And when people tell you that Isaiah is so easy to understand that even a child could understand it, that’s nonsense. If that was true then we wouldn’t see so many commentaries from all sides over the last 2500 years saying so many different things about it. Those are the words of people who want to tell you exactly how a child reads it in order to shame you into thinking that if you don’t agree, then children are more clever than you are. No, it isn’t easy and it isn’t self-evident. It’s an ancient document that needs to be treated with the utmost respect and studied in-depth and not just read over at a shallow level and then presumed to be understood. None of us are that smart. We no longer know what the author knew. We are not familiar with how ancient authors expressed things. And most of all, Yahweh is smarter than we are, and cleverer, and He did not give His word to us in a form that everything is a no-brainer.

Truth is, most everyone reads Isaiah with an agenda, and not to see what actually is and is not there—which is why we see exactly what we expect to see. That’s called confirmation bias. You know, if you are led to believe that Yeshua is found in every page of the Bible, you will find Him there and even when the connections are dubious in the extreme. So, if you don’t want Yeshua to be the Messiah, you will find stuff out of context that clearly says He is not the Messiah. If you know He is, then you will see Him fulfilling everything. So, you know, we have to know what we believe and not read Isaiah in order to prove ourselves right. I mean, I know that Yeshua is the Messiah experientially—I KNOW Him. I am not looking in Isaiah to prove it or disprove it because I have already experienced the new creation miracle in my life and it is ongoing. What more proof do I need He is the real deal?