Reflection, Dec 9, 2001AD

   Isaiah Had a Hint

            2741 years ago, around 740 BC, the people of Jerusalem faced a crisis in which they felt that God was abandoning them or was incapable of fulfilling His covenant (berith)with them. They felt that YHWH had assured them that there would always be a king from David’s dynasty on the throne to guarantee their stability.

            From the time of David, until the beginning of Isaiah’s prophecies, and concluding with the last Davidic king, Zedekiah, in 587 BC, most of these kings were an unsavory group. Still, the people believed and the elite propagandized that God was with them, no matter what.

            Isaiah was one of the first to see that, indeed, God was not bound to fulfill the covenant in the terms which the people and their kings presumed.  A Davidic king did not mean that YHWH tolerated a disregard for the legitimate dictates of religion, in which God was acknowledged as the Center of the life of the nation and the less fortunate in the Kingdom (viz., the widows, the orphans and the aliens) would not be neglected.  A Davidic king did not mean that God had to tolerate anything and everything to be faithful to the covenant.

            Isaiah saw that maybe the ideal king that God promised of the family of David was yet to be born.  He saw a king would bring order not only to the life of the people of Judah. This king would even restore the order from the Garden of Eden, when “the lion would again lie down with the lamb”. Isaiah felt that God was always faithful and that the promise would be fulfilled.  Still, the promise would be fulfilled on God’s terms, not on our terms.

            Father Mychal Judge, the fallen Fire Department chaplain from September 11^th, said, “If you want to make God smile, make some plans.” We all learn the meaning of those words if we don’t know them already. God has a different sense of reality than we have and, more importantly, a different sense of priorities. What we see as absolutely irrefutable and undeniable might be seen by God in a different light.

            Just as the people of Judah felt that a King in the line of David guaranteed their stability in their covenant relationship with God, they could not use that to presume that God would honor them and all their assumptions about themselves as God’s People.  The events of ancient Near East politics in the 8^th century BC and ff. shock them up. God did not fulfill the game plan in the way that they expected. Still, God remained faithful.  Their fidelity changed; the fidelity of YHWH did not.

            Christians see the ideal King in Jesus Christ, Son of David, down the road from Isaiah, whose prophecy was fulfilled on God’s terms, not on ours. In Jesus’ Messianic Kingdom, even now, may the Son of David enable us to spread His reign as we anticipate His Coming to us again and again and again. We do so by trying, with His Help, to live the values of the Davidic and Messianic King.  120901 AD jfq