Isaiah 12:2-6 Commentary

For the second Sunday in a row the Year C Advent Lectionary does not have an actual Psalm assigned but instead another psalm-like passage.  Last week it was Zechariah’s song from Luke 1 and today on this Third Advent Sunday it is a lyric passage from Isaiah 12.  This chapter of course follows on the heels of the well-known lines of Isaiah 11 about that shoot emerging from the stump of Jesse and also that lamb-and-wolf / calf-and-lion portrait of what is often called The Peaceable Kingdom.  If one of Isaiah’s primary assignments as a prophet was to convict Israel of its sins, he was also tasked with the proclamation of a whole lot of hope for a future salvation and restoration of the people of God.

Although a lot of those brighter portraits of redemption occupy the latter third of Isaiah, there are sprinkles of it throughout the book and Isaiah 11-12 most assuredly aim at bolstering hope.  This chapter is paired for Advent 3C with two other lyric passages. Zephaniah 3 is a great song of joy at the center of which is the lovely claim that the day will come when God will take great delight in his people.  When I preached on that text years back I suggested that this kind of divine delight in people reminded me of a grandmother’s brag book that she whips out of her purse every chance she gets to show off pictures of the grandkids in whom she delights.  God’s delight in us is like that!  Then Philippians 4 is that wonderful text about rejoicing always in the Lord and how the God of peace will be with us.

But this is also the Sunday that goes to Luke 3 and John the Baptist’s bracing message to the crowds that came out to see him at his wilderness baptism post.  John did not spare the horses in assailing the religious leaders for having a faith as dead as stones.  And he sufficiently shook the people up—including strapping Roman soldiers—that they found themselves begging John for advice as to what this life of repentance would look like.  “What shall we do!?” they cried out.  John’s somewhat unexpected answers to those pleas more or less boiled down to “Be nice for heaven’s sake!”  John’s advice on what bearing the fruit of repentance would look like was some pretty simple, everyday thoughts on being generous, sharing, doing your work well and honestly and to be above board with everyone.  He did not suggest any grand things like establishing orphanages or refugee centers or large non-profits.  He just said to straighten up and fly right in your daily activities and interactions with the people around you.

John’s rather fiery rhetoric seems at first glance to be out of sync with the other three passages for the week.  And yet Luke concludes his summary of John’s ministry by claiming that in and through everything John preached—even the startling parts—what he was finally doing was proclaiming “good news.”  Because following the path of repentance John mapped out for people would lead to what the other passages for this Advent Sunday talk about: a delightful relationship with God, rejoicing in the God who will fill you with peace, drawing from the wells of salvation forever and ever.

The Lectionary would have us skip Isaiah 12:1 but I think that is a mistake.  Why be shy about the fact that the God Isaiah is talking about had indeed once been angry with his people?  Sinfulness evokes that kind of reaction from a holy God.  And from our side of things acknowledging that this had been the case is part of the repentance John the Baptist will talk about centuries later.  But precisely that repentance and then an effort to bear the fruit of salvation is what leads to all the wonderful material in the rest of Isaiah 12.  So let’s not bracket out the “before” part of the “before and after” portrait of our salvation.

Probably the most striking image in Isaiah 12 is the one just mentioned above that talks about drawing from the “wells of salvation.”  How can we as New Testament people read that line without thinking of the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4?  Because it was there at an actual well of water—Jacob’s Well—that Jesus spoke of his being able to provide a living water that would well up in a person’s heart to become something that would quench our spiritual thirst unto eternal life.  As imagery for salvation goes, the idea of a well of living salvific water is very rich indeed.

We don’t typically think of that image during Advent, however.  But Isaiah 12 gives us an opportunity to appropriate it in the middle of the Advent Season after all.  There may even be a way to connect such water imagery to baptism.  Some churches celebrate the Lord’s Supper on Christmas Day as a reminder of what that Babe of Bethlehem went on to do to accomplish our salvation.  But I am not sure if too many churches do a Remembrance of Baptism as part of Advent or Christmas but perhaps that, too, would be a very good thing to do in this season of anticipation and waiting.  It connects us to the bigger picture and helps us see the Christmas Story in its proper context.

It could also be part of another thing Isaiah 12 commends: telling the whole world the story of our great salvation.

Note: In addition to our weekly sermon commentaries that appear every Monday, we have put together a special Year C resource page for Advent and Christmas.  Visit this resource to find links to whole Advent and Christmas sermons in print and as audio sermons as well as other reflections and helpful ideas for preaching in Advent. 

Illustration Idea

There is a linguistic curiosity in Isaiah 12:2.  Many Bible versions have Isaiah claiming that Yahweh is his “song” and has become his salvation.  But the NIV has “defense” in place of “song” and that seems odd since those two words do not seem remotely similar to one another.  The Hebrew word is zimrath and it does mean “song” but in the NIV here in Isaiah 12 and also in the two other places it occurs (Exodus 15 and Psalm 118) the NIV has “defense” in those passages as well.  The reasoning seems to be that a strong song of trust in God was something sung in the face of enemies and as such pointed to God’s protecting strength.  So the song was by this reasoning pointing to also someone’s defense.  The God to whom we sing will protect us.

How sound this translation reasoning is for the NIV goes beyond me but maybe there is something intriguing here too.  When we sing to God and when we do what Isaiah 12 commends and that is to sing about God before the whole wide world, we do so because God is our stronghold, our providential protector.  So when we sing, we simultaneously declare and highlight the power of God.

It goes without saying that in Advent and at Christmas so much of our focus in worship is on those familiar carols like “Joy to the World” and “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.”  Although we maybe mostly ponder how nice and familiar such carols and hymns are, maybe it is good to remember also that what we sing is true because of the almighty power of the God who allowed himself to be made flesh.  Despite the glittery ways we celebrate the incarnation and sentiments about silent nights and how still we see thee lie, there is at the center of the Christmas Story tremendous and awe-inspiring strength and power!