Isaiah

I can't resist the Hebrew prophets. So here's another in this series of riffs on the assigned readings for Sunday services at my church. Here's my take on the one I'll be reading on the Second Sunday in Advent -- December 2, this year: Isaiah 11: 1-10. And I'm afraid it's turned into something of a sermon. But even a lector can indulge in a bit of exegesis.

This is a famous passage -- about lions and livestock lying down together, and a little child shall lead them. It's a vision of a highly stylized utopia, a "version of pastoral", built on very different principles from the normal, natural world.

At one level, it harkens back to the ideal of the Garden of Eden -- carnivores no longer eat meat: "the lion shall eat straw like the ox". The former predators and the former prey shall lie down together and all are tame enough to be led by a child.

Again, a reading from the prophets in church. On November 4, I get to read Isaiah 1:10-20. Another go at woe before a cheerier Advent lesson that I've been assigned to read in early December: the one about "and a little child shall lead them".

I'm writing again about my assigned passages from the Hebrew Bible because these words in Ecclesiasticus, Amos, and now Isaiah speak to us quite clearly and disconcertingly, if only we tune in.

First, it was injustice, arrogance, and wealth that will destroy the nation. Then it was the wealthy, wallowing in self-indulgence, who will come to ruin because they don't care about the poor whom they've exploited. And now, as Isaiah sees it in his vision, it's our bloody hands that cause his God to despise all the ways the people worship, to turn away in anger, and to refuse to hear the people's prayers.

"(E)ven though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood."