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Chapter 2:Summary

This is what Isaiah saw concerning Jerusalem: Finally, in
the last days, the mountain of the Lord will be the highest of
all, and all nations will come to it. Many people will say:Let us
go to the mountain of the Lord, to learn His ways, so we may walk
as He wills. The Lord will judge between the nations from
Jerusalem. Then they will make ploughshares out of swords and
pruning hooks out of spears. There will be no more war anymore.

But then Isaiah puts aside this glorious vision of the
future and urges the house of Jacob to follow the light of the
Lord. Really, the prophet says, God has abandoned His people, for
they are full of superstitions from the East, they cultivate
divination as the Philistines do. They have material treasures
without end, a multitude of horses. But they also have many idols
and they bow down to the things their hands have made.

So Isaiah utters the terrible prediction:they will be
brought low. May God not forgive them!

Because of the coming wrath of the Lord, he tells them to
hide themselves in the ground. For human pride will be humiliated
on that Day of the Lord, when all the cedars of Lebanon, every
high tower, every ship of trade, and all human arrogance will be
brought low. Only the Lord will then be exalted, and idols will
be no more. In fear men will flee to caves, to holes, they will
cast away their idols. They have even treated rodents as gods. So
men will flee to caverns in the rocks out of dread of the Lord
when He comes to shake the earth. So they should no longer trust
in man:a man has only breath in his nostrils: he is of no
account!
 
Comments on Chapter 2

At the start of this chapter, Isaiah lets his mind turn to a
glorious future, in which all nations will come to Jerusalem to
worship God, and there will be no more war.

Supplement on the Messianic Age

We wish to consider two kinds of material: 1)highly
idealized pictures; 2)prophecies that seem to indicate all
gentiles will join Judaism.

First, the idealized picture: Isaiah 11:6-9 says the wolf
will be a guest of the lamb and the leopard with be with the kid,
and a calf and lion will eat together, with a child to lead them,
while the baby plays at the Cobra's den. There will be no harm
anywhere, and they will even beat their swords into ploughshares
(2:4).

What shall we say? First, we know the Semites had powerful
imaginations, and could exaggerate more than Hollywood. In fact,
the dire language of Matthew 24 about the sun being darkened, the
moon giving no light, and stars falling from the skies -- all
these are found in the descriptions of much milder events. Isaiah
13:10 speaks of the fall of Babylon thus: "The stars in the sky
and the constellations will not give their light. The sun will be
dark when it rises, the moon will not give its light." Similarly,
Isaiah 34:4 said in speaking of the judgment on Edom: "All the
stars will be dissolved, the sky will roll up like a scroll, and
the host of the heavens will fall like dried leaves from the
vine." Again, Ezekiel 32:7-8 foretells the judgment on Egypt
thus: "When I blot you out, I will cover the heavens and darken
the stars. . . the moon will not give its light."

Which is the more powerful, the more exaggerated imagery?
That about the wolf and the lamb, or about the sun and moon? Hard
to say.

In passing, some leftwing authors like to say that Joel 3:10
contradicts Isaiah 2:4. Joel says they will beat their
ploughshares into swords. A simple distinction will help. Even
the nonconservative NAB in a note on Joel 4:10 (= NRSV 3:10)
explains that warlike weapons are made in reply to God's call to
armies to expel forever the unlawful invaders, from the land of
the chosen people. Isaiah looks to a different situation:the
heavily idealized age of the Messiah.

But our second problem is much more complex. Many times over
the prophets foretell all the nations being converted to God.
Objectively and actually, that meant that the gentiles would be
called to be part of God's people. But that was new. Ephesians
3:5-6 tells of a secret not revealed to past ages:that Gentiles
are also called to be part of the people of God.

But to read Isaiah, for example, things would sound
different. For example Isaiah 2:2-5 says the mountain of the Lord
will become the highest mountain, and all nations will stream
toward it. They will say: "Now let us go up the mountain of the
Lord. . . that He may teach us in His ways and we will walk in
His paths. Teaching shall go forth from Zion and the word of the
Lord from Jerusalem."

Specially striking too is Zechariah 8:22-23: "Many peoples. .
shall come to seek the Lord of hosts in Jerusalem. . . ten men
from nations of every language will grasp a Jew, and take hold of
his garment: "Let us go with you. For we have heard that God is
with you."

A related problem is in the last chapters of Ezekiel,
chapters 40-48 which give a detailed description of a Jerusalem
to be restored, with a great temple and animal sacrifices.
Significantly, however there is no mention of a Day of Atonement,
or an ark of the covenant, or veil. The real day of Atonement was
Good Friday, and the veil was then broken forever. The ark is
replaced by the Eucharist.

How can we understand this? St. Augustine in <City of God>
4. 33 said that in the OT, material things were used to stand for
spiritual things: "there, even earthly gifts were promised, while
the spiritual men understood even then, although they did not
preach it clearly, what eternity was signified by those temporal
things, and in which gifts of God was true happiness." St. Paul
in Gal 3:15-21 spoke of the promises given to Abraham as really
standing for eternal salvation.

So, these images given by Ezekiel could be taken to stand
for eternal goods. And the lack of such essential things as a Day
of Atonement, an ark, and a veil give a hint of what the real
sense is.

But no wonder the first Christians had a hard time
understanding. Yes, Jesus had told the Apostles to go and teach
all nations. But we fear Peter and the others thought this meant
all nations would become proselytes. So in Acts 10, Peter, after
not understanding the vision of the sheet let down from the sky,
went to the Roman centurion Cornelius. Jewish Christians were
shocked that he would associate with Gentiles. Clearly the
commission of Mt 28:18-20 had not registered on them at all.

Let us not accept the foolish proposal that Jesus after the
resurrection never spoke words at all, that He just used interior
locutions; and that only in time did Peter and others come to
understand. This will not do at all, and only someone ignorant of
mystical theology could say such a thing. St. Teresa of Avila,
who had much experience with locutions, explained (<Life> 25):
"When God speaks in this way, the soul has no remedy, even though
it displeases me, I have to listen, and to pay such full
attention to understand that which God wishes us to understand
that it makes no difference if we want or not. For He who can do
everything wills that we understand, and we have to do what He
wills." She added (<Interior Castle> 6. 3. 7): "When time has
passed since heard, and the workings and the certainty it had
that it was God has passed, doubt can come" about the
authenticity of the message. So Peter would have had to
understand clearly at once , if Jesus had used an interior
locution, and later could begin to doubt. But the foolish
proposal has that turned precisely around.

We have already seen at least a glimpse of the truth:the OT
prophecies could easily give the impression, not that gentiles
would be accepted into the Church as gentiles, but that they
would all become proselytes.

But now we must ask:How and why did Jesus and the Scriptures
speak in away so readily misunderstood? We add that toward the
end of His public life some in the crowds began to suggest He
might be the Messiah. But others said no, for the Messiah must
come from Bethlehem (John 7:40-44). He could so easily have said
on that occasion:But I was born in Bethlehem. But He did not.

So we ask why? God wants faith to be free, not coerced. He
could have arranged to have His resurrection take place with all
Jerusalem, including His enemies, assembled before the tomb. This
would have bowled them over. There would have been no freedom
left to such a faith.

To understand, we need to notice that there are two main
kinds of evidence that lead us to accept something as
true:compulsive and noncompulsive. Compulsive evidence, such as
the fact that 2 x 2 = 4, forces the mind, does not leave it at
all free. But noncompulsive evidence is different, Further, there
is a broad spectrum of noncompulsive evidence running from some
things at the top of the scale, where the evidence is so strong
that no one actually doubts, e. g., that Washington crossed the
Delaware. But at the low end of that scale there are things where
feelings can enter, e. g., if one would say, about the original
Mayor Daley of Chicago, that he was a good honest politician,
those who received favors would agree he was good and honest. The
opposition would say quite the opposite.

Now the evidence for things of our faith is objectively
adequate, but definitely noncompulsive. It lies somewhere on that
scale we mentioned where it is rational to believe, <but one's
dispositions can enter into the result>.

This in turn is the same sort of framework we can see with
the parables. If we wanted to follow the chronology of Mark - we
are not sure of it of course - Jesus at first taught rather
clearly. But then the scribes charged He was casting out devils
by the devil. Then He turned to parables, and all three Synoptics
quote Isaiah 6:9-10, in varied forms, saying the same thing:It is
so that seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not
understand.

This was not deliberate blinding by Him. Otherwise why would
He later weep over Jerusalem for not understanding the time of
their visitation (Mt 23:27)?

No, He was setting up a marvelous divine device for dividing
people according to their dispositions. We might speak of two
spirals, in opposite directions. Let us think of a man who has
never been drunk before, but tonight he gets very drunk. Next day
- for this is the first time - he has guilt feelings. There is a
clash between his moral beliefs and his actions. Our nature
abhors such clashes, and something will have to give. Either he
will align his actions with his faith, or his faith will be
brought into line with his actions. This goes on and on, like a
spiral that gets larger as it goes out, and feeds on itself. In
other words, the man is getting more and more blind. In time he
will lose perception of other moral truths and even of doctrinal
truths.

Here is another remarkable thing. We know that God is
identified with each of His attributes, so He does not <have>
love, but <is> love. Similarly He is justice, and He is mercy.
How is this possible? We can begin to understand as we are now
explaining. The man who goes out on the bad spiral is getting
more and more blind. This is justice, he has earned the blinding.
But it is also mercy, for the more one knows about religion <at
the time of acting>, the greater the responsibility. So his
responsibility is mercifully being reduced. And in one and the
same action, we find both mercy and justice exercised.

On the good spiral we also see both. The man who lives
strenuously according to faith, which says the things of the
world are worth little compared to eternity, he will go farther
and farther on the good spiral. His ability to understand
spiritual things gets greater and greater. This added light is,
in a secondary sense, merited, and is justice. We say secondary,
for in the most basic sense, no creature by its own ability can
establish a claim on God. So all is basically mercy. Yet as we
said, secondarily there is justice: God in the covenant has
promised to reward those who keep His covenant law. So again, in
one and the same action, there is both mercy and justice
exercised.

So it seems we may have found at least some insight into
God's ways in these matters. One example is that He wants
Scripture to be difficult, so we may work on it more, and get
more out of it (cf. EB 563) but still more, so that those well
disposed will be justly rewarded, while those who ill-disposed
will lose the little they have. To him who has, it will be given.
From him who has not, even what he seems to have will be taken
away (Mt. 25:29).

Here we might borrow a line from St. Paul (Romans 11:33-34):
"O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How incomprehensible are His judgments, and unsearchable His
ways." We have had the privilege of seeing, not all things about
His wisdom, but some little corner, like Moses who had the
privilege of seeing God from behind.

Comments on Chapter 2 continued

Isaiah turns from this glorious vision to the realities of
his day, when the people and rulers alike were so unfaithful to
God. He says the wrath of God will strike, and he suggests, in
poetic fancy, that they hide themselves in caves, or in the
ground, from His anger.

Incidentally this is just the same kind of fancy that Job
indulges in in Job 14:13 ff. He says in effect he would like to
hide in Sheol, the realm of the dead, until God's anger would
pass. He knows he cannot do this of course. Incidentally, one
foolish commentator, not understanding this poetic imagery,
thinks Job raises the possibility of an afterlife, and then
denies survival - what would be left of the inspiration of
Scripture whose chief author is the Holy Spirit?

In 2:20 the prophet says then men will throw away their
idols, which include idols of rodents. Is this more fancy? No,
the Egyptians considered scarab beatles sacred, which gather dung
into a ball for food, roll the ball and carry it into a crevice.