NOTES for Isa 65:8-16

Lent is coming to an end, and the readings from the prophet Isaiah help draw some conclusions. In today's prophecy the Lord speaks about the fruits a person's choice brings: the one who chooses the Lord will rejoice, while the one who chooses himself will be put to shame. Yet the emphasis in these words somehow shifts very quickly to the great and glorious works of God. The source of the heart's gladness is not the many efforts we have made, but the "new thing" that the Lord Himself does. The goal of all the fasting that preceded these days is to see the salvation which the Son of God accomplished on the Cross, and to rejoice.

We already know that the Lord keeps faith with those He has chosen, even when they are unfaithful, but on that basis one should not grow calm and suppose that He is obligated to keep faith. No, His good will does not depend on our whims. He has the right to turn away from those who have turned away from Him. Neither belonging to a group that imagines itself privileged, nor traditions, nor scrupulous performance of rites detached from the essence of spiritual life will help or save. The Lord Himself saves. The prophecy reveals to us that the Lord can reveal Himself even to those who did not seek Him, and in this way He shows once more that no one has a right to privileges. They do not flow either from the length of one's "church experience" or from one's place in the hierarchy. Several centuries later, Christ will tell the parable of the workers of the last hour...

The first thing that comes to mind at the mention of the wolf and the lamb grazing together is that before us is a parable about the reconciliation of once deadly enemies. Yes, the Lord wants to establish His peace on earth, and such a reading is fair. But what if it does not exhaust the full meaning of the prophecy, and before us is an indication of a coming change in the character of living nature itself, that not only human society will be guided by different laws? For, in the apostle's words, "creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God" (Rom. 8:19)...

The proclamation offered in today's reading seems to sum up everything Babylonian Isaiah says about the Kingdom. On the one hand, the image of the new, messianic Jerusalem rises before us again (vv. 17–25). But here, in addition to the image of the city itself, there also appears a vision of a new heaven and a new earth (v. 17), completing the picture of a transformed world renewed by God. Now the issue is no longer only Jerusalem or even Israel, but the whole universe, and so the messianic Kingdom becomes a reality on a universal scale. Babylonian Isaiah speaks of a change in the laws of nature using the same metaphor as his predecessor, Isaiah of Jerusalem: the picture of a wolf and lamb lying together. He supplements it with a lion peacefully chewing straw and a snake with no thought of harming a human being (v. 25; Isa 11:6–8).

But not everyone will enter this messianic Kingdom. It is no accident that God says through His prophet that He “revealed Himself to those who did not ask for Him” and that He was “found by those who did not seek Him” (v. 1). In the history of God's people, God often knocked at the houses and hearts of those in no hurry to open (vv. 2–5). If the people nevertheless escaped historical destruction, it was only for the sake of those who remained faithful to God and the covenant amid general apostasy (vv. 8–10). They are the remnant from which, after all the trials, a new people now grows. The rest are left to their fate (vv. 11–15).

At first glance, God appears utterly merciless in this instance. But it is important to remember that the natural historical life of the Jewish people ended after the Babylonian conquest. By every historical law, Judea and its people should have shared the fate of the many other small states and peoples that vanished after the Babylonian invasion and dissolved in the gigantic melting pot that the Babylonian Empire became for them. If this did not happen, it was only because the faithful remnant, who did not abandon the God of their fathers, managed to preserve their faithfulness throughout decades spent far from their native land and ancestral altars.

For their sake, God intervenes in events, performs a miracle, and gives His remnant a second historical life. Every person who belonged to God's people during that catastrophe faced a choice: enter the remnant or vanish with the people, assimilating and dissolving into Babylon, which was an immense metropolis by the standards of the time. God can do nothing for those who leave: they themselves chose their fate. For His remnant He does everything possible, giving it not only new life but also the Kingdom.

The ardent dream expressed in the preceding chapter, that the Lord would rend the heavens and come down, cannot remain merely a dream. It is not only a request, not only a plea for God’s intervention, for His coming and judgement, but also a prophetic insight, a forevision of that coming. The world has lived by its own laws for too long, and although God has influenced it, guiding individual righteous people and sinners, as well as entire nations, onto the right path, His direct involvement is nevertheless necessary: not only through the spoken Word, but also through the Word made flesh. The Lord Himself must come into this world to gain it for Himself for ever. This process began in full force two thousand years ago, but it is not yet complete, and so we, like the prophet Isaiah, await a new heaven and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.