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I've studied on four chapters of Isaiah this week- 6 through 9- and I can easily see how someone could spend half a life studying right here. Keep in mind, I'm not trying to look at the entirety of what God says in this rich book, but only bits and pieces as I pass through. And in particular, the vision of Heaven where Isaiah gets his commission to go forth to a people who won't listen (which really should be an encouragement to all of us, in that we aren't failing if those who God wills to NOT hear don't), I have dealt with earlier in comparing it to Ezekiel's similar experience.
The opening of chapter 6 gives us the timeline- "the year King Uzziah died". We can pinpoint this historically to what we call 739 BC. Interestingly, commentator John Gill says Saint Jerome claimed it to be the same year the legendary Romulus founded Rome. I'm not sure which end Gill /Jerome didn't have quite nailed down, but tradition puts Rome's founding some 14 years earlier, in 753 BC. Not a big deal against the backdrop of years and the fallibility of a tradition that says a man raised by wolves and his brother founded Rome. But it does make one consider that Isaiah's prophecies will center on the fall of Israel- and there beginning is also the start of the rise of the pagan nation so important to the history of our faith. Almost as if this was where the torch was starting to be passed to the church.
I noted further elements of the timeline in the next two chapters. In 7, Isaiah is trying to explain to Ahaz, Uzziah's son and successor in Judah, why not to worry about the plots of Rezin, king of Syria, and Pekah, king in Samaria (Israel), to attack his kingdom. Isaiah derides the pair as "Smoldering ends of firebrands" (7:4), and then makes this prediction:
Isa 7:7 thus says the Lord GOD: "'It shall not stand, and it shall not come to pass.
Isa 7:8 For the head of Syria is Damascus, and the head of Damascus is Rezin. And within sixty-five years Ephraim will be shattered from being a people.
65 years from what had to have been no more than a year after Uzziah's death at most would bring us to 675 BC- the year that Assurbanipal, newly-minted King of Assyria, did something no other king of Assyria had done- he made his brother and rival a subject king of Babylon. Thus, from the nation that had by that time already destroyed Israel was born the future independence of the one that would destroy Judah. But as I said, Isaiah hadn't really dialed in the destruction of Israel so close, as it was only 12-13 years after the prophecy was made that Israel fell to Assurbanipal's great-grandpa Sargon II. Or did he?
If you skip up to early in chapter 8, you see the picture dialed in tighter...
Isa 8:3 And I went to the prophetess, and she conceived and bore a son. Then the LORD said to me, "Call his name Maher-shalal-hash-baz;
Isa 8:4 for before the boy knows how to cry 'My father' or 'My mother,' the wealth of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria will be carried away before the king of Assyria."
If you take the age of the child described to be his age of manhood, say 12 years old, that would hit the fall of Samaria right on the dot.
I marked down three other passages of note in chapter eight:
1- One of my favorite verses when a conspiracy theorist tries to worry me with the latest video about George Soros, the NWO, or chips in my COVID vaccine:
Isa 8:11 For the LORD spoke thus to me with his strong hand upon me, and warned me not to walk in the way of this people, saying:
Isa 8:12 "Do not call conspiracy all that this people calls conspiracy, and do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread.
Isa 8:13 But the LORD of hosts, him you shall honor as holy. Let him be your fear, and let him be your dread.
Like I said in a recent Better Part post, nothing to worry over, God's got even that.
2- Here's the Gospels of the New Testament in a thumbnail:
Isa 8:14 And he will become a sanctuary and a stone of offense and a rock of stumbling to both houses of Israel, a trap and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem.
Isa 8:15 And many shall stumble on it. They shall fall and be broken; they shall be snared and taken."
Isa 8:16 Bind up the testimony; seal the teaching among my disciples.
Isa 8:17 I will wait for the LORD, who is hiding his face from the house of Jacob, and I will hope in him.
3- And finally, to my Catholic friends, here's why I say it is a waste of time to ask Mary or the Saints to intercede:
Isa 8:19 And when they say to you, "Inquire of the mediums and the necromancers who chirp and mutter," should not a people inquire of their God? Should they inquire of the dead on behalf of the living?
Isa 8:20 To the teaching and to the testimony! If they will not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn.
Which is why Jesus told us what Abraham said to the rich man:
Luk 16:27 And he said, 'Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father's house--
Luk 16:28 for I have five brothers--so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.'
Luk 16:29 But Abraham said, 'They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.'
Luk 16:30 And he said, 'No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.'
Luk 16:31 He said to him, 'If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.'"
Moses= the Law. The Prophets = the Testimony. The Pharisees couldn't have missed this connotation with their eyes closed.
Chapter 9 is almost as loaded as 8, and it gives us five things to note here:
1- It begins with yet another prophecy of Jesus, including that His ministry would be in Galilee. It also tells us of His two natures in 9:6: A Child is born (physically created at a point in time), A Son is Given (indicating pre-existance as God's Son).
2- That verse follows with the great names for Jesus: and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
3- Israel's downfall was from the same reason our own is coming- we think we can do better than (or without) God:
Isa 9:8 The Lord has sent a word against Jacob, and it will fall on Israel;
Isa 9:9 and all the people will know, Ephraim and the inhabitants of Samaria, who say in pride and in arrogance of heart:
Isa 9:10 "The bricks have fallen, but we will build with dressed stones; the sycamores have been cut down, but we will put cedars in their place."
4- We have a choice whether to listen to man or to God. I saw not long ago such a choice, when a FB friend kinda laughed off her daughter's question of whether the Genesis account =was true, or science was. But if you decide on man's wisdom, think on this:
Isa 9:13 The people did not turn to him who struck them, nor inquire of the LORD of hosts.
Isa 9:14 So the LORD cut off from Israel head and tail, palm branch and reed in one day--
Isa 9:15 the elder and honored man is the head, and the prophet who teaches lies is the tail;
Isa 9:16 for those who guide this people have been leading them astray, and those who are guided by them are swallowed up.
5- Finally for this week, a reminder of why we NEED a savior:
Isa 9:17 Therefore the Lord does not rejoice over their young men, and has no compassion on their fatherless and widows; for everyone is godless and an evildoer, and every mouth speaks folly. For all this his anger has not turned away, and his hand is stretched out still.
