Isaiah ; Isaiah Why did Isaiah implore Israel to return to the Lord? Israel, blinded and judged for centuries, will someday be restored as a nation. It will happen at the return of their rejected Messiah, Jesus, and it will result in great worldwide blessing.
Isaiah , Jeremiah , Ezekiel Isaiah predicted the gathering of the Jews from around the world to return to their homeland. Isaiah points to the ruling Messiah, but also the suffering Messiah. Isaiah says the Messiah will rule in justice and righteousness. Isaiah , Isaiah Isaiah ; Isaiah Israel will be a light—a witness—to all the nations because of the Messiah.
This is echoed in Luke Everything that happened at the cross fulfilled the prophecies of Isaiah 53 and other messianic prophecies in the Old Testament. They promised him worship and observance of the law he gave them. Isaiah differs from Jeremiah and Ezekiel in that the character of his prophetic ministry blends foretelling the seer seeing far into the future in a greater measure with forthtelling [1] preaching the truth to a sinful people.
Some scholars have described the book of Isaiah as a vision of a mountain range in which the various peaks are visible, but the valleys stretching between the peaks the time periods separating various prophetic insights cannot be seen.
Is The text then passes over the fifteen-year reign of King Jotham 2 Kings and picks up in Isaiah with King Ahaz 2 Kings ff who was faced with the apparent imminent destruction of Jerusalem at the hand of the Syrians and their allies at the time, the northern kingdom of Israel. Thus the prophetic word of the Lord through Isaiah spans uncounted generations.
While they warned sinful people of the impending disaster God would visit on them because of their sin, only a few prophets extended the range of their prophecies beyond the next punishment God would bring upon a sinful people.
More precisely, this prophecy has a near-term fulfillment in the birth of a baby at the time of Ahaz, and an ultimate fulfillment in the virginal conception and birth of Jesus. These themes are discussed in the order of their first major appearance in the book of Isaiah. An index of all the passages discussed, listed in chapter and verse order, is given at the end of the article. Isaiah begins by insisting that religious rituals nauseate God when accompanied by sinful living:.
What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.
The catastrophe coming upon the nation is a direct result of its oppression of workers and lack of provision for those in economic need.
Announce to my people their rebellion, to the house of Jacob their sins. Yet day after day they seek me and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness and did not forsake the ordinance of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments, they delight to draw near to God.
Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice? Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.
How does this work? Again and again, Isaiah gives us a vision of God, high and lifted up above all gods:. Our work and our worship are bound together by our view of the Holy One. Our understanding of who God is will change the way we work, the way we play, and the way we view and treat people who could benefit from our work. The integral connection of our work and the practical application of our worship also show up in the stories of two kings the prophet used to highlight the place of trusting God in the workplace.
Both Ahaz and Hezekiah had leadership responsibilities in Judah as monarchs. Both faced terrifying enemies bent on the destruction of their nation and the city of Jerusalem. Ahaz refused to trust God for deliverance, turning instead to an imprudent alliance with Assyria. In these two stories, Isaiah highlights for us the contrast between faith in God the basis of our worship and fear of those who threaten us. The workplace is one location where we face the choice between faith and fear.
Where is our Lord when we are at work? Worship or work not emanating from a true vision of who God is and what God has promised is not true worship or work at all. In the writings of Isaiah, arrogant pride and self-sufficiency are particularly related to the denial of the authority and majesty of God in all spheres. The combination of these three factors creates a pernicious triad drawing the people away from a humble reliance on God. Instead, they rely on the work of their hands — idols as well as wealth and military might.
He makes the same statement of their military prowess and the idols: there seemingly is no end to which the people do not go. The prophet ridicules the idols, crafted by their own hands and then worshiped as gods Is. God abhors human pride and self-reliance. In chapter 39, King Hezekiah comes under the judgment of God because he took it upon himself to show off the temple treasury to the emissaries from distant Babylon.
In Is. The need for loans, with the consequent perils of slavery…, foreclosure and ultimately debt slavery, were the means whereby this could be pursued legally but, in the opinion of the prophets, unjustly.
As the people of God, they were called to be different from the surrounding and competing cultures. Babylon would be brought down Is. In our day, we see exploitation of entire nations by their own leaders, as in Myanmar, disaster brought on by the negligence of foreign corporations, as in the Bhopal disaster in India, and the defrauding of investors by individuals like Bernie Madoff. The danger with an exciting find like this one is that the growing excitement over the discovery will move away from its particular historical relevance.
In the past, artefacts that overlap with biblical records have taken on a talismanic quality in which a new find is used to support broader religious, political, and ideological claims. To name but two examples: the reference to the Israelite people in the Victory Stele of the Egyptian Pharaoh Merneptah BC , which is the earliest reference to Israel outside the Bible, and the mention of the House of David in the Tel Dan inscription, from the 9th-century BC, are often cited as evidence that the biblical narrative is true.
Looking past the deeply problematic omission of the many discoveries that conflict with biblical historical narratives, Bachman is leveraging historical artefacts about the past to make grand sweeping statements about the accuracy of the Bible.
The tendency to use archaeological artefacts in this way is hardly unique to the archaeology of the Iron Age Levant. The same phenomenon is at work in efforts to identify and claim national ownership of the earliest human remains.
Evolutionary theories about the geographical origins of the human race are closely tied to nationalism and politics. As anthropologist Jon Marks argued , those who claim to own the earliest example of human remains get to play a pivotal role in the story of human evolution.
All attempts to tell history are also weighed down by our current commitments: whether scholars choose to write about military heroes, women, slaves or animals reveals a great deal about what is valuable to us.
Isaiah lived about years before the birth of Jesus Christ. Olivia Rodrigo —. Megan Thee Stallion —. Bowen Yang —.
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