NOTES for Isa 40:18

In the biblical books, the expressions "image of God" and "likeness of God" often occur. On the other hand, the prophets said more than once that God has and can have no image, reminding people of the meaning of the second commandment of the Decalogue. Of course, this commandment refers in particular to sacred statues and sacred images, so widely spread among all pagan peoples both in antiquity and in modern times. But the issue, as we can see, is not only images of gods that have nothing to do with the One. The story of the golden calf comes to mind involuntarily: after all, the Jews demanded of Aaron that he "make" for them not some pagan god, but a metal image of the One who had brought the people out of Egypt. Yet this did not reduce at all the anger of Moses when he came down from the mountain.

Why is that? Perhaps because the image of the sacred bull symbolized Apis, or Baal, or someone else unknown, but only not the God of Abraham and Moses? And in the mass religious consciousness, unfortunately, neither Apis nor Baal ever rises to the God of Abraham. But the God of Abraham almost inevitably gets lowered to Apis. And then Yahwism turns into paganism covered with a monotheistic wrapper, the worst kind of paganism possible: open paganism, after all, does not claim to be the only true faith; it does not present itself as monotheism. But paganism born inside a monotheistic tradition demands the same attitude toward itself as toward what gave birth to it, deceitfully appropriating the worship owed to the God of Abraham. And under the appearance of a path leading to truth, it offers the worshiper a path into a spiritual dead end.

Today we begin reading the second half of the book of the prophet Isaiah, written in the middle of the sixth century BC. The unknown prophet usually called Second Isaiah began writing it while still in the Babylonian captivity and finished it in postexilic Jerusalem. His prophecy begins in Babylon with a word of hope and consolation. Today we read an astonishing hymn to the Creator’s might. The prophet sings this hymn while still in captivity, seeing only the very beginning of the complex historical processes through which God grants freedom to His people. The prophet’s main idea is that nothing can resist the Creator’s will. “His understanding is unsearchable,” and we cannot see all His ways, but His power is irresistible. Therefore, the prophet says, there is a great and inexhaustible hope for all of us: “those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength; they will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary.”

Thus the prophecy about future destinies turns to the consolation of the very people to whom so many rebukes had been addressed. Now the sins have been paid for, twice over, which usually calls to mind the provision of the law that a thief had to repay twice the value of what was stolen. Of course, far from all sinners were thieves in the literal sense, and theft is not the only vice, but that is unimportant at the moment: no one has the right to exalt himself above robbers, for other sins, which often seem “permissible,” are no better. But now forgiveness comes, and with it the hope of a new and qualitatively different life in harmony with the Creator’s will.

Quite naturally, after the promise of hope the prophet begins to speak of the Lord’s greatness, of how He can neither be compared with anything nor imagined. Here Isaiah’s words recall to some extent the final chapters of the Book of Job, where Job’s questions fall away after the Creator reveals His incomprehensibility to him. The situation here is different, of course: unlike Job, the people of Israel did not suffer without cause. Yet even now, when the sinners have apparently repented of their sins and at last “understand everything,” the Lord shows once more that both He Himself and His mercy surpass every degree of our understanding.