Monday of Week 15 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Isaiah 1:10-17
Last Saturday we saw Isaiah’s call to be a prophet of God taken from the sixth chapter. We now go to the beginning of the book and from now on will have selected readings from chapters 1-39, which are really part of Isaiah’s own ministry. The rest of the Book of Isaiah (Parts 2 and 3) is now attributed to other writers.
Isaiah pulls no punches in communicating his message. When he writes: “you rulers of Sodom” and “you people of Gomorrah”, these are not addressed to the peoples of those cities which were long ago destroyed. He is speaking to the rulers and people of Jerusalem and the southern kingdom of Judah of which it is a part.
Today’s reading is a severe attack on religious hypocrisy. It is part of an oracle presumably uttered in the Temple at the beginning of Isaiah’s ministry. Like Amos (see the First Reading for Wednesday of Week 13 of Ordinary Time), Isaiah castigates ritual divorced from morality. He makes it clear that the sincerity of the worshipper, not the number of his or her religious activities, is most important.
On the face of it, the people seem deeply religious. But he disparages:
…the multitude of your sacrifices…burnt offerings of rams
and the fat of fed beasts…the blood of bulls
or of lambs or of goats.
God finds no pleasure in a mere multiplicity of offerings. He does not even expect them:
When you come to appear before me,
who asked this from your hand?
Their offerings are not really directed to God, but are a form of self-adulation: “How good we are! How pious and dedicated we are!”
The air filled with the smell of incense has become loathsome to Yahweh. He has no time for all their “new moons”, which were celebrated at the beginning of every month. Special sacrifices and feasts were part of the observance.
All their efforts at religious celebration and observance are in vain. When they spread out their hands in prayer, Yahweh hides his eyes:
When you stretch out your hands,
I will hide my eyes from you;
even though you make many prayers,
I will not listen…
Why? Because their “hands are full of blood”—on the one hand, the blood of sacrificial victims; on the other, the blood of the poor and weak who have been exploited and abused.
At first sight, it all seems to contradict everything we have heard about our merciful, forgiving and compassionate God. We remember, too, how Jesus taught us to pray incessantly. But here the prayers are so hypocritical. They consist of purely external ritual devoid of any real commitment to Yahweh’s will.
Their prayers can never be heard until they emanate from deep within the heart. Their prayers will be heard when people’s lives are seen to change radically—when they cease to do evil things and concentrate on what is good.
They need to wash themselves clean and put away their misdeeds, which no amount of sacrifices and holocausts will cover up. They must have only one aim:
Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean…
learn to do good;
seek justice;
rescue the oppressed;
defend the orphan;
plead for the widow.
When they search for justice and reach out to the oppressed, when they treat the widow and the orphan with justice, love and compassion, then and only then will their sacrifices be truly acceptable to the Lord.
In a society which knew nothing of social welfare, where the needy depended on support from the family, the widow and the orphan were particularly vulnerable to abuse and neglect. The widow might very well be relatively young, having lost her husband through disease, accident or war. She had no future as no man would again marry her. If she was childless, she was of no interest to her father’s family or even her own. The orphan, too, was left exposed to destitution or having recourse to prostitution, male or female.
Applying this reading to our own situation is not difficult. We can see people devoting a great deal of energy to religious activities such as devotions, pilgrimages and novenas. We can see them obsessed with keeping commandments and regulations and external observances, but in their daily lives there may be a widespread lack of charity, compassion or willingness to forgive, to tolerate, to understand. There is often a wide dichotomy between what they proclaim in church and what they do in their daily lives.
“Don’t speak of love; show me!” exclaimed Eliza Doolittle to Professor Higgins in the old play, My Fair Lady. That could well sum up what God is saying to his people in today’s reading.
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Monday of Week 15 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Matthew 10:34—11:1
Today, we come to the final part of Jesus’ apostolic discourse in chapter 10. At a first reading, today’s passage could be puzzling, if not to say highly disturbing to some. Jesus seems to contradict everything that he has said and done so far.
Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace but a sword.
But do we not call Jesus the Prince of Peace? Does Jesus not say during the Last Supper discourse in John’s Gospel (14:27) that he has come to give his peace to his disciples, a peace that no one will ever be able to take away from them?
And Jesus goes on to apply to himself a passage from the prophet Micah (7:6):
For I have come to set a man against his father,
and a daughter against her mother,
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law,
and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.
It sounds a terrible thing for Jesus our Saviour to be saying. But it expresses, not what he wants to happen, but what he sees as an inevitable outcome of his message of love. It says more about us than about him.
Unfortunately, what Jesus says has only been confirmed again and again. We have mentioned before the paradox that Jesus’ message of truth, love, justice and freedom for people everywhere is seen by some as highly subversive and dangerous. And people who subscribe to this vision of Jesus and try to implement it in their lives are likely to run into headlong opposition with those who have a totally different vision of life and who see Jesus’ vision as a real threat to their interests. In a world of conflicting ideologies, philosophies, cultures, traditions, ethnic and religious identities, to declare that one is opting for the Way of Jesus is often to invite opposition, persecution and even death.
What Jesus says here is a fact—and was already a known experience when this Gospel was written. Christianity divided families and, in some places, it still does. But people who see and understand and accept the vision of life that Jesus offers know they have no choice but to follow it, even if close family members object. To go with Christ is to enter a new family, with new bonds—a family which, for its part, does not at all reject those who reject it. The Christian may be hounded and hated and expelled by family members, but that is not the way he or she is going to respond to them. On the contrary, the dearest wish of the new Christian is for family members to be able to see what he or she sees and, until they do, that new Christian will pray for them, bless them and love them.
Jesus then goes on to lay down the conditions necessary to be a genuine disciple.
Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me…
In many cultures this is a hard saying and seems to fly in the face of the filial piety and respect for the authority of elders which is at the heart of such societies.
It is not, in fact, a conflict. Love and respect for family members is a very high value for the Christian, but there are even higher values which may take precedence. Filial piety and parental authority can be very inward-looking, too centred on just this group of people. Racial, national and religious identity can also be very narrow and intolerant in its understanding.
Christianity is outward-looking and realises that there are people out there whose needs are even prior to those of my family. To the Christian, members of his or her blood family are only some among many brothers and sisters who have to be loved, served and cared for. One is also never bound to follow family requirements which would be against such values as truth, love, justice and honesty. As a Christian, I cannot obey a parent or other family member who practices dishonesty in business, who cheats, who sexually abuses, who practices racism or narrow-minded nationalism and the like and urges me to do the same.
Jesus, as the Word of God, stands for a level of truth and integrity and love which is the ultimate measure of all that I do and say. I cannot conform to the wishes of anyone, however close, who falls short of that measure. But my Christian love and concern for that person will not be diminished, in spite of how I may be treated.
To live like this can at time involve pain, separation, intense suffering and even death. This, I think, is what Jesus means when he says that I am not worthy of him unless I am willing to take my cross and walk with him. There is a price to be paid for being true and loving and just. This also is what he means by ‘finding’ life and ‘losing’ my life. To ‘find’ life is to take the easy way of accommodation and compromise, not to mention material gain and pleasure; to ‘lose’ is to let go and let Jesus take charge. Of course, as Jesus points out, in the long run it is the ‘losers’ who find and the ‘finders’ who lose.
The discourse ends with some advice about finding Jesus in other people, especially his own followers. Anyone who welcomes a follower of Jesus, whether that person is a ‘prophet’ (a missionary) or a ‘holy man’ (an ordinary Christian), welcomes Jesus himself and welcomes the Father also. Even giving a cup of cold water to someone “in the name of a disciple” will not go unrewarded.
The discourse is then clearly brought to an end by Matthew, saying:
…when Jesus had finished instructing his twelve disciples, he went on from there to teach and proclaim his message in their cities.
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Saturday of Week 15 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Matthew 12:14-21
Jesus is becoming a figure of controversy. We saw yesterday how he was accused by Pharisees of condoning the breaking of the Sabbath on the part of his disciples. Far from apologising, Jesus defended his followers and implied that he himself was greater than the Law. Immediately afterwards he went to a synagogue and, in spite of a challenge about healing on the Sabbath, went ahead and cured a man with a “withered hand” (Matt 12:9-13). At the end of this story, Matthew says:
But the Pharisees went out and conspired against him, how to destroy him. (Matt 12:14)
He was seen as a severe threat to their authority—and this is where our reading begins today.
Jesus was fully aware of their plotting and so he disappeared from sight for a while. We should be clear that Jesus did not go out of his way to confront and attack people. Still less was his behaviour deliberately designed to create trouble for himself. There are people like that; they go out of their way to make trouble for others and for themselves. Jesus never behaved in such a way. He did not want to attack or be attacked by people. He did not deliberately engineer his own sufferings and death, quite the contrary. So now, as things get hot for him, he withdraws for a while.
At this point, Matthew (remember, he is writing for a Jewish readership) shows how Jesus’ behaviour corresponds to a prophecy in the Old Testament—something he does a number of times in his Gospel. He quotes the passage from the prophet Isaiah (42:1-4), and it shows Jesus as full of the Spirit of God campaigning for justice for peoples everywhere.
He is the servant whom God has chosen, “in whom my soul delights”. He is no demagogue shouting from a soapbox:
He will not cry out or lift up his voice
or make it heard in the street…
He moves around quietly and, at the same time, is tolerant and understanding of the weak. His behaviour is described as gentle and kind, so that:
…a bruised reed he will not break,
and a dimly burning wick he will not quench…
We, too, are called to live and proclaim the gospel without compromise, but to do so without any taint of arrogance or bullying. At the same time, we need to show patience and understanding for those who are not yet ready to answer Jesus’ call.
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Saturday of Week 15 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Micah 2:1-5
Today we have the first of three readings from the prophet Micah. Micah was a contemporary of Isaiah, but we know nothing of his life except that he came from an obscure village in the foothills of Judah. Like the other prophets, he attacked those who exploited the poor, merchants who cheated, corrupt judges, priests and prophets. The cities of Jerusalem and Samaria were particular targets.
The verses we read today are directed mainly against rich landowners who are oppressing the poor. According to the prophet, they lie in bed wondering what their next money-making move will be. Micah, however, describes their plans as plotting evil and planning mischief, as those:
…who devise wickedness
and evil deeds on their beds!
As soon as dawn breaks, they get up to put their plots into action. The rich, exploiting classes continue to get rich at the expense of the poor because they control the power structures of their society:
They covet fields and seize them,
houses and take them away…
Covetousness alone was a violation of the tenth Commandment. Land monopoly, also denounced by Isaiah, was a chronic vice in Judah. To protect the poor against it, a man’s inheritance, his ancestral property, was supposed to be inviolate. According to the Law, land was the permanent possession of a family. But the wealthy, in their greed, were enslaving poor landowners for their debts and thus taking over the land in payment. (We saw something of this when Queen Jezebel engineered the death of Naboth as a way by which the king, her husband, could have the vineyard he coveted; see the reading for Monday of Week 11 of Ordinary Time.) And then they would take over the house as well, presumably as collateral for a debt that had not been repaid. In this way, the already rich landowners could increase their ownings with the least outlay (and the greatest injustice). It all sounds so contemporary!
But the prophet warns that they are not going to get away with their exploitation of the poor and weak for long:
Now, I am devising against this family an evil
from which you cannot remove your necks…
Little do they know that the invader is about to strike and carry off everyone, both rich and poor, into bitter exile:
On that day [the rich]
shall take up a taunt song against you
and wail with bitter lamentation
and say, “We are utterly ruined;
the Lord alters the inheritance of my people;
how he removes it from me!
Among our captors he parcels out our fields.”
Micah says that oppressing classes, the monopolists, will be excluded from the division of the land in the restored kingdom:
Therefore you will have no one in the Lord’s assembly
to allot you a piece of land.
They will be cut off from all the promises of the covenant people. “To allot you a piece of land” is an allusion to the initial distribution of the land of Palestine among the Israelites when they entered the Promised Land. The appropriate punishment of those greedy for land will be loss of their land to their enemies, a loss that will be irrevocable.
But in “the Lord’s assembly”, in the Kingdom that is to come—that Kingdom of justice and peace—there will be a true sharing out in which all will get their due share. However, there will be no share for those who greedily tried to monopolise all material wealth into their own hands and brought suffering on the poor and needy.
Our societies today are no strangers to the exploitation of the poor by the already rich. It can be one individual against another, one society against another, one nation against another, or even one continent against another. Sometimes, such exploitation may even be according to the law and be defended in court, but the injustice remains. In spite of unprecedented prosperity, we live in a world of scandalous inequality. Let us always work to change it.
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Friday of Week 15 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Matthew 12:1-8
Today’s story follows immediately on yesterday’s words of Jesus inviting those carrying heavy burdens to come to him for comfort and relief. Those burdens were understood to be the yoke of the Law which could weigh so heavily on the ordinary person. Today we see what kind of burdens it entailed.
Jesus and his disciples are walking through a cornfield. The disciples were feeling a little hungry so they began plucking ears of corn to eat…nothing wrong with that. Gleaning, especially where the poor were concerned, was not regarded as stealing:
If you go into your neighbor’s standing grain, you may pluck the ears with your hand, but you shall not put a sickle to your neighbor’s standing grain. (Deut 23:25)
Yet the Pharisees criticised the disciples’ behaviour before Jesus. They were not upset by the plucking of the corn, but because it was done on a Sabbath day. Most manual work was forbidden on the Sabbath, including for instance, reaping. So we read in Exodus:
Six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest; even in plowing time and in harvest time you shall rest. (Exod 34:21)
The question that would come immediately to the legalistic mind would be what exactly constituted harvesting. In the minds of the Pharisees, who would put the strictest interpretation in order to be on the safe side, what the disciples were doing contravened the Sabbath requirements.
Jesus would have none of this nonsense. He gave two examples which the Pharisees would find difficult to criticise. First, David’s soldiers, because they were hungry, went into the house of God and ate the ”bread of offering”, that is, bread which was laid out as an offering to God. According to the Law, only the priests were allowed to eat this bread.
Second, he pointed to the priests on temple duty who not only worked on the Sabbath, but did more work than usual on that day (like priests today!). Yet no one found fault with them.
Jesus has two further and more powerful arguments. First, he calls his accusers’ attention to a saying paraphrased from the prophet Hosea:
I desire mercy and not sacrifice… (Hos 6:6)
What this means is that the measure of our behaviour in God’s eyes is not our observance of law, but the degree of love and compassion we have for our brothers and sisters. Laws are for people; people are not for laws. That is why a truly loving act always transcends any law. If the Pharisees had fully understood the meaning of Hosea’s words, they would not have “condemned these innocent men”.
Second, Jesus simply says,
…the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.
Jesus as Lord is not bound by even the God-given laws of Israel. If, in the eyes of Jesus, his disciples are innocent, then they are innocent.
Every time we read texts like this we have to look at how we as Christians behave both individually and corporately. Legalism and small-mindedness can very easily infect our Catholic life. We can start measuring people—including ourselves, but especially others—by the observance or non-observance of things which really have little to do with the substance of our Christian faith. Of course, we can also go to the other extreme of having no rules at all.
There is a very demanding law to which we are all called to subscribe and that is the law of love. It allows of no exceptions. But its practice can only benefit both the giver and the receiver.
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Friday of Week 15 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Isaiah 38:1-6,21-22,7-8
(Note that the verse numbering for today’s reading is read as a continuous text where vv 21-22 follow vv 1-6 and are then both followed by vv 7-8.)
Today we have the story of a good man who faithfully followed God’s will. It is our last reading from this part of the Book of Isaiah. The other parts of the book will be read at other times in the liturgical cycle.
The story told today seems to have taken place some time before the Assyrian invasion by Sennacherib in 701 BC. Isaiah plays a central role in the king’s dialogue with God. It begins with the prophet telling the king, who is terminally ill, that it is time for him to put his affairs in order for his approaching death. The prophet Elisha similarly predicted the death of the Syrian king, Ben-Hadad (2 Kings 8:9-10).
The king turned his face to the wall (not of his bedroom, but more probably of the Temple, God’s dwelling house), and prayed that God would remember the good things he had done in the service of Yahweh during his life. Among a line of kings who were steeped in idolatry and immorality, Hezekiah stood out for his goodness.
It is possible, too, that he had as yet no son or successor to take over from him, and so he wept bitterly. To think that he was going to die without an heir was perhaps the greatest pain of what seemed a terminal illness.
But his prayer clearly pleased the Lord, for Isaiah was sent with the good news that Hezekiah would be cured and in three days’ time would be able to go up to the Temple. More than that, he was promised that another 15 years would be added to his life, and that Jerusalem would be protected from the Assyrian king. (We saw in yesterday’s reading how Sennacherib’s army, about to lay siege to Jerusalem, was decimated by a plague which killed more than 180,000 soldiers and thus forced Sennacherib to withdraw.)
Finally, Isaiah ordered that a poultice of figs be applied by the court physicians so that the king could recover from an illness that was originally (v1) believed to be terminal. Figs were often used for medicinal purposes. Hezekiah, for his part, asked for some sign to confirm that he would be healed and that he would be able to go to the Temple and make a sacrifice of thanksgiving. It is not clear what sign he was requesting, but it might simply have been the healing of what is described as a “boil”.
His request was granted and the sign promised was that the setting sun would go back by ten steps, as indicated by its shadow on the “dial of Ahaz”. The meaning is not clear, though the phrase likely refers to a sundial. In any case, the promised sign took place. It may have been a miracle or it may simply have been caused by the refraction of light.
Here we see how a good man approaches the news of his death. His main concern is that God should be aware of the kind of life he had led. At first he does not ask to be healed, but rather that he experience final salvation with God. God then gives him what he had not actually asked for, namely, that he be healed and many more years of life be given to him. This is his reward for his fidelity to Yahweh during his reign.
When we are confronted with serious sickness, our own or that of people close to us, we too need that kind of attitude that accepts fully what God wills for us at this time. Perhaps it is the end of our time on earth, and we have to bid farewell to it and go forth to meet our God face to face. Or it may be that our time has not yet come and we will be called to live on, either totally or partially healed, for some time to come. In that case, our healing is a call for us to greater service of God and our neighbour. It is also an opportunity to re-orientate our lives where that is necessary. Strange to say, a spell in hospital is not infrequently a grace-filled time to reflect on the meaning and direction of one’s life…perhaps even better than a retreat!
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Thursday of Week 15 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Matthew 11:28-30
The Gospel in many of its passages is very demanding and requires an unconditional commitment to the following of Christ. We have seen that clearly in the contrast Jesus made between the demands of the Law and what he expected from his followers. But again and again, that is balanced by the other side of God—his compassion and his understanding of our weakness and frailty.
Today Jesus invites:
Come to me all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.
He seems to be referring to the burden of the Law and the many other legalistic observances which had accumulated over the generations. In fact there was a common rabbinic metaphor which spoke of the ‘yoke of the Law’. We will see some of this in the two remaining readings of this week. Jesus did not have much time for this kind of religion. He invites us rather to come to him and experience comfort and consolation.
Jesus invites us to take on his yoke instead. A yoke can be heavy, but it makes it easier for an ox to pull a cart or a plough. Jesus’ yoke is the yoke of love. On the one hand, it restricts us from acting in certain ways, but at the same time it points us in the right direction. In the long run, it has a liberating effect. It is not unlike the idea of the “narrow gate” which Jesus invites us to go through rather than follow the wide road to nowhere (Matt 7:13-14).
Jesus asks us to learn from him in his gentleness and humility. This was in stark contrast to the severity and arrogance of other religious leaders. Not only are we to experience the gentleness of Jesus, we are also to practise it in our own dealings with others.
Another lovely idea that has been expressed arises from the observation that it was quite common for farmers to use double yokes, with two animals pulling a cart together. The thought is that Jesus is offering to share his yoke with me, so that Jesus and I will pull together and thus split the work. In any case, Jesus assures us that his yoke is easy and his burden is light.
Jesus expects us to give all of ourselves to him, but when we do so, we discover that what he asks is absolutely right for us. To follow Jesus is not to carry a great weight, but to experience a great sense of liberation. If we have not found that experience yet, then we are not yet carrying the yoke of Jesus.
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Thursday of Week 15 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Isaiah 26:7-9,12,16-19
We have today a beautiful prayer for judgement to come soon. It is the prayer of one who wants to follow closely the Lord’s way:
The way of the righteous is level;
straight is the path of the righteous that you clear.
His one longing is to be close to his Lord:
…your name and your renown
are the soul’s desire.
This contrasts strongly with the cruel and materialistic world of yesterday’s reading.
The next phrase is also a lovely one and one which we could make our own prayer:
My soul yearns for you in the night;
my spirit within me earnestly seeks you.
We speak today of ‘seeking God in all things’, in every person, in every experience, in every situation. This is where our lives get their true meaning:
For when your judgments are in the earth,
the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness.
It is the judgements of God which throw light on what is really good and true and just.
The upright person too totally accepts those judgements and decisions of God:
O Lord, may you ordain peace for us,
for indeed, all that we have done, you have done for us.
The good person has nothing to fear: good deeds will bring their own reward; evil deeds will bring their consequences too. In either case, the good experience peace because, whatever happens, they are in touch with God’s love.
The pains that follow from sinful acts are accepted:
O Lord, in distress they sought you;
they poured out a prayer
when your chastening was on them.
Everything, absolutely everything—be it good or bad, pleasant or painful, as Paul reminds us, works together for the ultimate good of those who love God. Those without that love are left pained and puzzled. Those with love find peace in every experience.
In this passage, the prophet also speaks with regret of how the people have not lived up to their commitments. He may be referring to the Assyrian oppression.
Israel was intended to be “a light for the nations” (see Isaiah 42:6 and 9:2) but:
We have won no victories on earth,
and no one is born to inhabit the world.
Jesus will teach us in the Gospels that his followers are also called to be the “salt of the earth” and the “light of the world”. We are to let people see our goodness so that they may be drawn to love and glorify God. But by their behaviour, Isaiah says that God’s people failed in this regard.
And we Christians, too, would have to admit to frequent failure. In these days, we are as likely to turn people away from Christ as towards him. It is time for us, as it was for the people that Isaiah addressed, to bring the dead, the spiritually dead, back to life. And then:
Your dead shall live; their corpses shall rise.
Let us pray that our land be transformed from one of “corpses” to one that has and gives life.
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Wednesday of Week 15 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Matthew 11:25-27
Yesterday we saw Jesus severely chiding the people of three cities, where he had shown many signs of his divine origin, for their slowness to believe in and accept him. Today he speaks with warmth and praise of those who have become his followers.
He remarks, in a prayer he makes to his Father, that it is not the learned and clever, the scribes and Pharisees, the religious experts, but “the infants”, his disciples, who have been graced with understanding the secrets of the Kingdom. They are infants not only in their lack of learning and sophistication, but also in their openness to hear and learn, a virtue lacking in those who regarded themselves as intellectuals.
This was in fact a reflection on the actual development of the early Church. It was a grassroots movement which spread most among the lower levels of society and among slaves. It would not be until later that Christianity spread to the higher echelons and would become the faith also of the ruling elite and the intellectual classes. As Jesus says today:
…yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.
In growing and spreading in this way, Christianity showed, first, that it was really the work of God. It worked against powerful forces which tried very hard to obliterate it, but in the end the power of truth and love were too strong for even the strongest opponents.
Second, it revealed the truly catholic nature of the Christian faith. It was never an exclusive domain of either the political or educated elite. It has appealed, and continues to appeal, to people at every level of society from intellectual giants like Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and John Henry Newman to the totally illiterate. Both can sit side by side and together hear the gospel and celebrate the Eucharist.
Finally, Jesus suggests that knowing him and, through him, knowing the Father, is a gift that he gives. We can all, of course, open ourselves to that gift. Why some of us do and others do not is something we cannot understand in this life. It is a gift which is offered, never imposed, and again no one can know who are those who have been offered it and turned it down.
Let us today thank God that we have been among those who have listened and accepted and been graced. But we know we have a lot more listening and accepting yet to do. Jesus stands at our door and knocks today and every single day. It is my decision to what extent I open that door and let him come in.
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Wednesday of Week 15 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Isaiah 10:5-7,13-16
Today we have a powerful passage from Isaiah, full of eloquently poetic images, but with one very simple message: the Lord God is master of all that happens. On the face of it, the conquests of Assyria (and later of Babylon) seemed to be the work of a powerful empire. Yet, in truth, Assyria, for all its power, is in the prophet’s eyes merely the unwitting instrument of God.
So the prophet cries in God’s name:
Woe to Assyria, the rod of my anger—
the club in their hands is my fury!
He says this because what Assyria does is wicked and evil. Isaiah is probably referring to Sennacherib at the time of his invasion in 701 BC. It is “the rod of [God’s] anger” because it is an instrument unknowingly doing the work of the God in which it does not believe. Later on, Babylon will play the same role.
Assyria is being sent “against a godless nation”, namely, God’s own people in Judah who have turned their backs on their Lord to indulge in idolatry and immorality. It is with the Lord’s permission that the Assyrians under Sennacherib:
…take spoil and seize plunder,
and…tread them down like the mire of the streets.
Maybe Sennacherib believed this was all his own strategy—but no:
…this is not what he intends,
nor does he have this in mind…
The Assyrian’s aim was:
…to destroy
and to cut off nations not a few.
But in reality, he was bringing the punishment on Judah which its sinfulness had merited.
Not aware of the supporting role he was playing in a bigger drama, he makes his boasts (in a verse left out):
Are not my commanders all kings? (Is 10:8)
As he made one conquest after another, he put his commanders as rulers of vanquished territories:
Is not Calno like Carchemish?
Is not Hamath like Arpad?
Is not Samaria like Damascus? (Is 10:9)
In this verse, he lists off the cities that have become part of Assyrian territory.
And what he has done to other idolatrous territories, will he not do the same to Jerusalem and its idolatrous images? And so he continues with one boast after another:
I have removed the boundaries of peoples
and have plundered their treasures;
…I have brought down those who sat on thrones.
In language filled with contempt for his opponents he boasts:
…as one gathers eggs that have been forsaken,
so I have gathered all the earth,
and there was none that moved a wing
or opened its mouth or chirped.
Altogether in his statement, Sennacherib refers to himself nine times. He really believed all that happened was his own doing:
By the strength of my hand I have done it,
and by my wisdom, for I have understanding…
However, as a godless people, Assyria’s lot would be no better than those it was trying to crush (it appears reminiscent of the arrogance of Hitler at the height of the Nazi regime).
Sennacherib’s power is all an illusion. The prophet says:
Shall the ax vaunt itself over the one who wields it
or the saw magnify itself against the one who handles it?
Sennacherib is in God’s hands. And so his ultimate impotence is revealed when some sort of sickness, probably some kind of rapidly spreading plague, brought death to 185,000 of his troops in 701 BC as they prepared to lay siege to Jerusalem, forcing him to withdraw (2 Kings 19:35).
Again we have to read this passage with care. In some ways, there are natural explanations for all that happened both to the Assyrians and to God’s people. We need to avoid the image of a vindictive God who hits back at his disobedient people by bringing terrible calamities on them. The principal message is rather that ultimately everything comes from God and we are—as Paul would say—like putty in his hands.
The message for God’s people is that, by turning their back on him, they will gain nothing and lose everything. This applied equally to the Assyrian conquerors and the defeated people of Judah. Even the most powerful people in our society ultimately have “feet of clay” and can be brought down by the simplest of things (like an invisible virus). Yet, how many of us, sometimes in small and silly ways, think that we can wield power and seek to have power over others?
True life and true happiness consists in our being at all times malleable instruments in God’s hands, bringing life and happiness to others.
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