Isaiah 35:4-7 Commentary

Is the Anger of God Good News?

All the way back in Isaiah 27, the sword of the Lord’s wrath is brought out.  We are told in verse 4 that thorns and briers will war against Israel’s enemies, that unless there is peace, God will bring judgment.  All of these images are picked back up again in chapter 34.  Commentators aren’t sure why Edom is the chosen recipient of wrath in this text though perhaps, says Christopher Seitz, “This warning was directed to the nations at large in chapter 27, and Edom’s fate is given as an example of what happens when the restored vineyard is violated.”

But even Isaiah 27’s dire warning of God’s judgment ends with a word of hope: “In the days to come Jacob shall take root, Israel shall blossom and put forth shots, and fill the whole world with fruit.”  Isaiah 35 more thoroughly fleshes out this blessed reversal.

By the fact that the Lectionary centers Isaiah 35 multiple times and Isaiah 34 not at all, it’s fair to conclude we’re not always sure what to do with the judgment of God. Despite our uncertainty, the prophets certainly seem to share it as good news.  How is the anger of God good news?

Because we don’t have much context and even scholars have to guess as to the historical realities behind these stories of judgment, they can seem arbitrary to readers and to listeners of sermons. In this case, we turn to what we can know, what is revealed to us in Scripture and that is the character of God.  God is covenant-maker and keeper.  God is protector and defender. God will watch over God’s people.  God is just and, therefore, weeps over injustice.  But God is also powerful and can do something about injustice too.

Setting aside our comfortable Western sensibilities and reading the text outside of a comfortable Western setting, isn’t it the case that we want God to protect persecuted Christians?  To release pastors of house churches from jail? To stand up for Christians whose houses of worship have been burned? To avenge the violence the death of innocent Christians in war or as victims of violence?  And isn’t the belief that just vengeance can only be mediated through Christ, himself a victim of unjust suffering and death, a safeguard against our own efforts to “even the score”? In this framing, then, the anger of God at the injustice that makes us angry is good news, especially because it leads to redemption’s great reversal, which we celebrate in Isaiah 35.

Great Reversals

Although Isaiah 35:1 isn’t reflected in the lectionary reading, it is a great resource to reference. It serves as a kind of thesis statement for what follows and links it back to the hope at the end of Isaiah 27.

There are three central images in Isaiah 35, each somewhat captured in this pericope: a blossoming wilderness, healing and wholeness for those diminished by physical suffering and the restoration of exiled people.

In each image, Biblical scholar John Goldingay points out the use of two Hebrew verbs: the first, which we translate “redeemer” is a similar notion to what we see in the book of Ruth, where Boaz “redeems” Ruth and, perhaps more to the point, his relative Naomi from grief and poverty.  The work of redemption, which we see in Boaz as a personification of what God does for us, “designates Israel as a member of Yahwe’s family to whom Yahweh accepts this family obligation…One common way in which a restorer would need to act would be rescue someone from servitude that had come about through debate, or was threatened by debt.”

The second Hebrew verb also emerges out of family obligation or covenant loyalty.  This has a more explicitly financial meaning that Goldingay translates as “redress” or, if it is not too loaded a word, “reparation,” a repair of what has been ruptured.  This word, translated by Goldingay in this way, is most often translated for our English Bibles as “vengeance” or “revenge.”  As Goldingay points out, these words have an unfortunate connotation of going over the top, of further ruining instead of restoring.  He observes, “It’s surely necessary to restore Israel, and it’s surely also necessary to require the nations to pay their penalty.” This is the work that justice requires, a work accomplished through Christ in his death and resurrection but finally completed in his coming again.

As a brief aside, note how the book of Isaiah demonstrates the idea of interpreting Scripture with Scripture and allowing ideas to build over the lifetime of a text. Isaiah 34 and 35 work together to illustrate what Isaiah 27 foretells. And all of it works in tandem with Ruth’s parable of redemption, which it s a foretelling of Christ’s own work.

A Supporting Text

The Lectionary’s readings from Hebrew Scripture often serve a kind of supporting function.  This week offers some great opportunities to bring in this judgment and flourishing motif.  Both Psalms (Psalm 125 and Psalm 146) remind us that God is the one who will fight and ultimately win for the cause of the oppressed.  God is the one who will fight and ultimately defeat injustice.  Our task is first to trust God’s promise in this matter.  However, the epistle of James suggests that our trust and faith must find an outworking somewhere and somehow.  God invites us to participate — provisionally, humbly — in small acts of justice, glimpses of redemptions great several.

Worship Idea:

There is a recent hymn — a sort-of updated version of Jesus’ Beatitudes that pairs well with the many emphases of this text.  The Kingdom Is Yours was written by several song writers who, for various reasons, felt alienated from their own religious communities.  So, although it is lament, it is tinged with the anger at injustice that features prominently here.  It also recognizes that the Kingdom is a gracious gift of God, not something we earn or deserve.  But at the same time, the song compels us to live further into the upside down kingdom of Jesus, foreshadowed in the great reversals we find in the prophets.  Perhaps this song fits your congregation’s song diet and style but, if not, I can still offer it as a soundtrack to your own journey from text to sermon.

Note: the CEP website also has commentaries on Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23

from Stan Mast, 2018: https://cepreaching.org/commentary/2018-09-03/proverbs-221-2-8-9-22-23/

from Scott Hoezee: 2021: https://cepreaching.org/commentary/2021-08-30/proverbs-221-2-8-9-22-23-3/