Grounds for Hope

Oranges grown in California’s central valley, often on immense farms, are harvested from January to June. The dust of this barren part of the earth has become fertile.

The ploughing and planting that is necessary for such bounty is not random, but carefully planned, like the ordered rows of the orchards. But the beauty and order of these rows of trees may well be lost on the farm workers of California, many of whom work long hours for low wages (Arax 2018). These millions of oranges do not simply ‘drop down from the sky’ (Arax 2018: 50). Indeed, for some, the labour and the water used to irrigate the crops are seen as purloined, or in Isaiah’s words, ‘snared, and taken’ (v.13).

This third section of Isaiah 28 lays out the planning necessary for the earth to yield its abundance. Every farmer knows its importance. It is an expression of the wisdom God has embedded in creation. But this section is also a parable of what God is doing with Israel. Like the wise farmer, God plans and plants with care.

God’s ordering has justice at its centre—God’s ‘community development programme’ includes uprooting and ploughing under, as well as planting and harvesting. Farmers may have learned their practical wisdom from God’s creation; its human implications were something that Israel’s religious leaders had forgotten. As a result, they can only speak gibberish (v.13). They have constructed their own order instead of trusting YHWH’s and in the process made a covenant with death.

Perhaps Israel’s leaders thought they were the authors of their own prosperity, forgetting that their wisdom came from elsewhere: from YHWH. But when the people forgot the central focus of Isaiah’s message—‘Cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow’ (Isaiah 1:17)—it was YHWH who had to plough and uproot.

References

Arax, Mark. 2018. ‘A Kingdom from Dust, February 4, 2018’, The California Sunday Magazine

Goldingay, John. 2014. The Theology of the Book of Isaiah (Downers Grove: IVP)

Watts, John. 1986. The Book of Isaiah (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans)

In 1948, Barnett Newman painted Onement I, which he claimed was his artistic breakthrough. That same year he specified the purpose of his artistic work:

We are reasserting man’s natural desire for the exalted.… Instead of making cathedrals out of Christ, man or ‘life’ we are making them out of ourselves, out of our own feelings. The image we produce is the self-evident one of revelation, real and concrete. (Newman, in Rose 1968: 160)

This work was the first of his famous ‘zip’ paintings where a painted vertical strip both divides and unites the canvas. Though Newman claims this ‘cathedral’ is made out of his own feelings, it may also reflect something of his own Orthodox Jewish heritage, for the strong vertical also suggests a plumb line that sets a standard against which deviation can be measured.

In this central section of Isaiah 28, the prophet exposes the folly of Israel. Though they should be able to relax and trust in YHWH’s providence (v.12), they followed the advice of inebriated priests and made a covenant with death (v.15)—a reference to their attraction to the Canaanite god Mot = death—by aligning themselves with Egypt against Assyria. As John Goldingay writes: ‘Making Egypt their refuge is an act of blasphemy. YHWH is supposed to be their refuge, their shelter’ (Goldingay 2014: 137). To establish this place of security God promises ‘a sure foundation’ (v.16) and a line for justice, a plumb line (v.17) that both separates justice from injustice and unites those who trust in YHWH.

However much Newman claimed to trust his self-made ‘cathedral’, his work references another aim: to find some standard, a line that can be trusted. Even the title of this work, Onement I, recalls the ancient root of the word ‘atonement’: making into one, suggesting a yearning for reconciliation that, in that post-war period of hope in the West, recalls the experience of eighth-century BCE Israel.

References

Goldingay, John. 2014. The Theology of the Book of Isaiah (Downers Grove: IVP)

Newman, Barnett. 1968. ‘The Sublime is Now’, in Readings in American Art: A Documentary Survey, ed. by Barbara Rose (New York: Praeger)

In 2010 visitors to Syria would still have found a quiet and peaceful country, though under the surface resentment seethed against a Ba’athist dictatorship that had ruled the country for almost half a century.

But in March 2011 everything changed for Syrians, as a revolution and civil war turned vibrant cities like Kobane and nearby Aleppo, their suqs, mosques, and richly ornamented houses, into ruins. Both government and rebels sought outside alliances, precariously harnessing the self-interest of foreign powers. To compound matters, ISIS (so-called Islamic State) took every opportunity to advance its bloody campaign. By 2017, 400,000 Syrians had been killed and millions had fled their homes in search of peace and security for their families. Meanwhile, the ruling family and their supporters lived in safety in Damascus, protected and defended by foreign military allies.

In 721 BCE the world changed for Israel as well: Samaria was devastated and shortly after, Jerusalem was attacked. Their leaders too had become indulgent, turning dangerously to Egypt for assistance. The people would suffer for their misguided priests ‘bloated with rich food … overcome with wine’ (Isaiah 28:1b).

This photograph offers a poignant glimpse into modern Syria’s suffering. A Kurdish Syrian woman is returning with her son to her home in Kobane in March 2015, after it was reclaimed from ISIS, and seeing the devastation of her city. The destruction of cities and the direct experience of these events are apparent in both this photo and the words of Isaiah: these ‘documents’ expose us to devastation as they narrate not from a distance, but in close-ups.

International aid to Kobane has been pitiful, and most of the city is still a wilderness. But Isaiah promises something that seems hard to imagine when faced with such catastrophic scenes of devastation: that God will be a spirit of justice and strength (v.6). That in the midst of their loss, a standard of justice and a vision of beauty will appear, holding out hope for a ‘crown of glory’ (v.5) to a people ‘broken and snared and taken’ (v.13c).

After devastation, there may still be a return; a renewal.

References

Van Dam, Nikolas. 2017. Destroying a Nation: The Civil War in Syria (London: I. B. Tauris)

Watts, John. 1986. The Book of Isaiah (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans)