The Servant in Isaiah 48:16

Just been puzzling over this passage this morning:

1st person:  Listen to me, O Jacob, and Israel, whom I called! I am he; I am the first, and I am the last.  13 My hand laid the foundation of the earth, and my right hand spread out the heavens; when I call to them, they stand forth together.  14 Assemble, all of you, and listen!  Who among them has declared these things? 

3rd person: The LORD loves him; he shall perform his purpose on Babylon, and his arm shall be against the Chaldeans.

1st person: 15 I, even I, have spoken and called him; I have brought him, and he will prosper in his way. 

1st person: Draw near to me, hear this: from the beginning I have not spoken in secret, from the time it (feminine) came to be (me-et hayiotaa) I have been there.” 16 And now the Lord GOD has sent me, and his Spirit.  17

3rd person: Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel:

1st person:I am the LORD your God, who teaches you to profit, who leads you in the way you should go. Isaiah 48:12-17

  1. the Heavens and the Earth (and those that would try to determine the future by them)
  2. Israel
  3. The LORD
  4. Cyrus
  5. the Spirit of God
  6. ???

Who is the speaker in vs 16?

One candidate might be Isaiah.  But Isaiah doesn’t fit the description. The prepositional phrase, ‘merosh’, translated ‘from the beginning’ in vs 16 is only found in three other places in Isaiah – both of them in this same section of Isaiah.

Isaiah 40:21 Have ye not known? have yet not heard? hath it not been told you from the beginning [merosh]? have ye not understood from the foundations of the earth?

Isaiah 41:4 Who has performed and done this, calling the generations from the beginning [merosh]? I, the LORD, the first, and with the last; I am he.

Both verses refer to primordial beginnings. If we assume that ‘merosh‘ has the same meaning here then it must refer to someone much greater than Isaiah.  For the same reasons, the speaker cannot be Cyrus.

The one who speaks in the 1st person in vs 16 is best understood as the Servant who was introduced in 42:1ff and is again mentioned again in 49:1-6 (once again speaking in the first person), and, of course, in Isaiah 53.

 

Atheism in Isaiah

 Atheism in Isaiah (47:8-10):

You felt secure…

You said in your heart…

I am and there is no one besides me…(8)

No one sees me…(10)

I am and there is no one besides me. (10)

Your wisdom and your knowledge have led you astray.

Urartu

The king of Urartu announced today that he supports marriage equality for gays and lesbians.  “Its been a long journey but, by the strength of Khaldi, I’ve seen the light,” the king said at a gathering of city notables.  Shariri, the priest of Mushashir, also spoke out in favor of a more inclusive definition of marriage, “We believe that all people, without consideration of gender, race, age, or number, have the right to unite in holy ‘mony’ whether it be ‘mater’, ‘pater’, or ‘nater’.”  When asked whether the proposed amendments to the Code might have a detrimental effect on children, Shariri called attention to the recent research conducted by Sevan University that has convincingly proven that it is better for a child to be raised in a fostering, non-traditional home than in a traditional, bigoted one.

The proposed changes to the Code arrive on the heels of exciting new medical advances.  Ashurbanipal, a researcher in Asshur, has recently written on the phenomena of protandry and protogyny as observed in flatworms and several varieties of swamp eels.  His research has led to the development of a new  hormone therapy that now makes sex change available to human beings as well.  Ashurbanipal encourages children to wait before deciding whether they are male, female or something in between.

The desire to have children by lesbian ‘couples’ has opened up new markets for entrepreneurs.   ‘Pick-a-Kid’, a cutting-edge family consultation firm, recently created a comprehensive database of sperm donors.  A lesbian couple can now select the father of their child from a list of over 60 x 6 anonymous donors.  Each catalog entry contains detailed information about the males appearance, hobbies, music preferences and how many Cimmerians he has slain on the battlefield.  Many of the donors are university students who are feeling pressured by rising tuition costs.  An unblemished, male student, without a criminal record, can earn as much as a shekel per donation at one of Pick-a-Kid’s many clinics around the country.  “Its great,” said one student who wished to remain anonymous. “I owe Pick-A-Kid my education.”  His youthful enthusiasm was only briefly tempered when asked how it felt to be a father.  “I am humbled to be the biological father of possibly dozens of children,” he said solemnly.  When asked whether he had considered the possibility that one of his children might unknowingly marry a half-sister or half-brother or that they might wish to know their paternal half, he shrugged his shoulders and walked away.  This is not the first time such questions have been raised in public, but a spokeswoman for ‘Pick-a-Kid’ dismissed them as purely “hypothetical” and reminds all Urartuans that no great engineering project has ever been implemented without a cost.  “Incest is a small price to pay for equality,” she added.

Lodi, the kings treasurer, believes that these recent advancements in human freedom and equality will result in economic growth.  In a cuneiform transcript released by his office on Rehov Homa he highlighted the ways finance can help in making children more accessible to the biologically disadvantaged. “With the advancement of cyrotechnology and the emergence of sperm banks, we will soon be able to trade ‘future-children’ on commodity markets like wheat and orange juice,” he said.  When asked whether he had any misgivings about the potential commoditization of children, he replied, “We are doing Teshub’s work”.  The Rabshakeh has also expressed support for this plan, noting the significant advantages to be gained from derivative contracts in ‘future-children’ as a hedge against the economic costs of an aging population.

The King of Urartu’s main political opponent has politely side stepped the issue of gay marriage, wishing rather to focus on stubbornly high unemployment levels and the rising use of food stamps.  “People are demoralized and need to be reminded how exceptional Urartu really is,” he said.  Meanwhile, a conservative oracle openly berated those within the conservative ranks who insist on making an issue out of gay marriage, arguing that they are, “on the wrong side of history.”  Progressive oracles have taken a more direct approach towards opponents of the new legislation, calling on the king to “cut off their heads.”  The king is unlikely to take such drastic measures, however, preferring rather to dialog “as civilized people and not like the Cimmerians.”  We can only hope that reason will prevail.

Jerusalem Forest

On a bike trip from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv – I had some problems with my bike. So I had some time to kill in the forests just west of Jerusalem. Time lapse photography is a good way to kill time!

I don’t think that the random movement of branches in the wind works well with time lapse… More subtle or linear movements work better.

I also had problems finding a range in which the highlights or shadows were not lost as the sun emerged from behind the clouds.

Death by a 1000 nibbles

Back in the first century, Ignatius injected himself into enough political debates that he wound up getting eaten by lions at the Coliseum.  But no doubt tut-tutting NPR listeners would have deplored the way the Church had injected itself into live theater.  Ignatius’s successor bishops have opted for an ignobler end, agreeing to be nibbled to death by Leviathan.  Mark Styn in the National Review

Faith

My niece is a little dare devil.  She likes to stand on my knees and lean backwards as far as she can – a big smile on her face…   The faith of a child is a precious thing. 

And what if I let her go?

It would be better to have a great millstone tied around my neck and be thrown into the depths of the sea than to cause one of these little ones to stumble…  Those words are both tender and harsh at the same time.  Tender towards children and harsh towards those who would harm them.  Strange how, in the name of progressiveness and liberalism, we have gotten that completely switched around now.

The Ultimate Experiment

I just finished reading Sleepwalkers by Arthur Koestler on Kepler, Galileo and Newton.  I was surprised that he sided with the church against Galileo by arguing that the whole science vs. faith dichotomy is not based in historical fact.  Koestler was Jewish and a Communist before writing an influential novel exposing the dark side of the Stalinist Regime.

In Return Trip from Nirvana Koestler tells an interesting story about a research clinic he visited where they were experimenting with new drugs.   As he toured the clinic he recounts seeing a monkey in a strait jacket with probes sticking out of its skull – its wise, old eyes peering back at him, resigned to its terrible fate as a research monkey.

Somewhat ironically, Koestler was visiting the clinic to experiment with a new drug at the invitation of an acquaintance, Timothy Leary, the Harvard professor who popularized the use of LSD in the 60’s.  Leary’s letter to Koestler provides a snapshot into the decade of the 60’s.

Dear K …,
Things are happening here which I think will interest you. The big, new, hot issue these days in many American circles is DRUGS. Have you been tuned in to the noise? I stumbled an the scene in the most holy manner. Spent last summer in Mexico. Anthropologist friend arrived one Weekend with a bag of mushrooms bought from a witch. Magic mushrooms. I had never heard of them, but being a good host joined the crowd who ate them. ~Wow! Learned more in six hours than in last sixteen years. Visual transformations. Gone the perceptual machinery which clutters up our view of reality. Intuitive transformations. Gone the mental machinery which slices the world up into abstractions and concepts. Emotional transformations. Gone the emotional machinery that causes us to load life with our own ambitions and petty desires.  Came back to U.S.A.

Koestler did return to the USA and in a critical essay called “Return Trip to Nirvana” he wrote about his experiences with drugs while he was there.

…I was still in control of my outward behavior, and this remained true throughout the whole three or four hours of the experience. But at the same time I had completely lost control over my perception of the world. I made repeated efforts `to walk out of the show’ as I had been able to do during the first stages on the couch, but I was powerless against the delusions.  I kept repeating to myself: ‘But these are nice, friendly people, they are your friends’, and so on. It had no effect whatsoever an the spontaneous and inexorable visual transformations. At one stage, these spread from the faces of others to my own right hand which shriveled into a cripple’s, and to the metal bars of the table lamp, which were transformed into the claws of a predatory bird.

Drugs had promised to open a window into another dimension – “a kind of do-it-yourself approach to salvation” but the visions they produced were like those of a maniac – they were not spiritually helpful.  Some of the experiences with drugs recounted in his essay are fairly humorous.

While working on the material I was reminded of a story George Orwell once told me (I do not recall whether he published it) : a friend of his, while living in the Far East, smoked several pipes of opium every night, and every night a single phrase rang in his ear, which contained the whole secret of the universe; but in his euphoria he could not be bothered to write it down and by the morning it was gone. One night he managed to jot down the magic phrase after all, and in the morning he read: ‘The banana is big, but its skin is even bigger.’

Koestler also experimented with women and coauthored an encyclopedia on sex (apparently as a desperate measure to gain an income). Basically, Koestler seems to have gone through life like Solomon… trying everything.  His life was one great and terrible experiment.  But at the end of his life Koestler could never say with Solomon,

He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.  Ecclesiastes 3:11

Koestler had a pan-entheistic view of the universe.  He believed that quantum physics ultimately undermined the existence of matter and therefore all mechanistic and materialistic views of the universe were wrong (he is very critical of the current scientific establishment).   In the epilogue to his biography of the early astronomers, he writes,

Each advance in physical theory, with its rich technological harvest, was bought by a loss in intelligibility…. The chair on which I sit seems a hard fact, but I know that I sit on a nearly perfect vacuum… The list of these paradoxa could be continued indefinitely; in fact the new quantum-mechanics consist of nothing but paradoxa, for it has become an accepted truism among physicists that the sub-atomic structure of any object, including the chair I sit on, cannot be fitted into a framework of space and time.  Words like ‘substance’ or ‘matter’ have become void of meaning, or invested with simultaneous contradictory meanings. (Sleepwalkers, Koestler)

Koestler concludes that the universe is an emanation of Mind.  He quotes Sir James Jeans, the British astronomer and physicist,

Today there is a wide measure of agreement, which on the physical side of science approaches almost to unanimity, that the stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine.  Mind no longer appears as an accidental intruder into the realm of matter; we are beginning to suspect that we ought rather to hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter. (Sleepwalkers, Koestler)

Koestler came to believe in a Mind that created and governed the realm of matter but not a Person.  The universe was like a cosmic brain in which each human being was a brain cell.  I cannot think of anything more depressing than that.

Koestler’s last experiment was with death.  Having been diagnosed with cancer, he decided to end his life.  Tragically, his young and healthy wife decided to join him and so they committed suicide together.  Here is a portion of the note he left behind:

I wish my friends to know that I am leaving their company in a peaceful frame of mind, with some timid hopes for a de-personalised after-life beyond due confines of space, time and matter and beyond the limits of our comprehension. This ‘oceanic feeling’ has often sustained me at difficult moments, and does so now, while I am writing this.

I remember watching Avatar a while ago and feeling the impact of its strong pantheistic message.  The movie made that worldview very attractive and I have no doubt that the next generation will grow up with that movie heavily influencing their ideas.  Eastern religion has no laws to follow – just principles to adhere too.  Life is not a war – rather, we should go with the flow.  Peace out!

It is all very nice but is it true?  World Peace is a nice idea too but the last time we beat our swords in plough shares we quickly beat them back into swords again. And is Eastern religion really all that nice?  Look at what it has done for Eastern nations.  Japan Bushido, the Hindu Caste system… what is it that we find so attractive about these ideas?  And do I really want to come back again as another creature, hopefully a little higher up on the chain of being?  Is my highest aspiration to become a wave in the ocean eternally kissing the shore?  If I were just a mind, just a thought, then I might be ok with that… but I am more than that, I am a being.

I think one of the most remarkable stories in the Bible is the revelation of God’s name at Horeb.    Yahweh, the One who Is.   Yahweh, the one who created the world with a thought – yes!  But also with love!

 And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.  John 17:3

 

Common Descent – Part 2

Darwinian evolution predicted that organisms that share physical features will also share genetic information in common but genetic research has shown the opposite. Here is how one article recently published in the journal New Scientist puts it,

For much of the past 150 years, biology has largely concerned itself with filling in the details of the tree. “For a long time the holy grail was to build a tree of life,” says Eric Bapteste, an evolutionary biologist at the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris, France. A few years ago it looked as though the grail was within reach. But today the project lies in tatters, torn to pieces by an onslaught of negative evidence. Many biologists now argue that the tree concept is obsolete and needs to be discarded. “We have no evidence at all that the tree of life is a reality,” says Bapteste. That bombshell has even persuaded some that our fundamental view of biology needs to change.

Why Darwin was wrong about the tree of life
21 January 2009 by Graham Lawton

The article goes on to state that the evidence from DNA suggests that life is interrelated horizontally and not just vertically – like a spider web rather than the root system of a tree. This is not what genetic scientists expected if life evolved from a common ancestor.  The article then attempts to explain this anomaly.  Genetic material is not only transferred through reproduction but also on the sly by means of Horizontal Gene Transfer (HGT).  This is supposed to occur in three way:

1) endosymbiosis
2) viruses
3) hybrids

I don’t know enough to weigh in on the discussion but it will be interesting to see what comes of these new discoveries.  Who would’ve thought that we’d see the day when evolutionary biologists would call ‘the tree of life obsolete! 

It’s History

I was once told by a history prof that “there is no room for metaphysics in history.” I disagree!   If the job of a historian is to do more than simply collect facts but also to make sense of them then history must enter the realm of metaphysics.  And this means history may be used and abused.

History has always been twisted by evil men to justify their actions.  Nazi historians wrote long ‘scholarly’ articles that tried to prove that the Aryan race was the most pure and powerful of all the races and that Christianity actually had its roots in Aryan civilization instead of Semitic. In similar fashion, Mao used naive western journalists to whitewash the dark history of the Chinese Communist Party and transform the Long March into a propaganda piece.  Mussolini drew on the glories of the Roman empire to justify his expansion into Africa.  Ahmadinejad denies the holocaust in order to justify his vitriol against the Jews.

There is something remarkable – and all together unnatural – about the history found in the Old Testament. Compare the history of Israel to any other national history and you will immediately notice that theirs is uniquely a history of failure!  In the Exodus account alone, Israel is said to have tested God eleven times in the desert.  Even the most significant failures of Israel’s greatest kings are preserved in painful detail.  However, in the Hellenistic period some religious groups in Israel began to revise their history somewhat.  The Book of Jubilees, for example, written early in the 2nd century, revised OT history to remove some of the more glaring scandals.  It was this kind of historical revisionism that John the Baptist warned the religious leaders of his day against.

“You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. Matthew 3:7-9

There has been a lot of talk about American exceptionalism lately.  Gingrich referred to it in his victory speech in South Carolina in the context of the Federalist Papers, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.   Ginrich and others are trying to shore up patriotism but they miss what it is that makes any nation special.  What is the point in saying, “We have John Adams, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson as our father!”  Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.

The only thing that makes a nation exceptional is the degree to which it experiences and reflects the grace of God.  The only healthy kind of patriotism is the kind that results in deep humility and gratitude to God.  Everything else is hubris.

 

Maale Amos to Ein Gedi

While in Israel, a friend from school and I did a hike from Maale Amos, in the heart of the Judea mountains to Ein Gedi on the Dead Sea.  A Bedouin fellow gave us ride for a small part of the way and his son showed us around their camp.  You can see in the video how he was able to get the attention of his flock.  Reminded me of Jesus words, “My sheep hear my voice…”

Along the way we visited the remains of one of the most isolated of the Byzantine monasteries in Judea. What would drive a person to sleep on a stone bench and eat next to nothing for their life time?  I know some say that these men came out of such pagan environments and had been so deeply affected by it that this was the only way they could find peace.  I don’t know.  They could not have been following the example of Jesus – he spent almost all of his time with people – with the exception of the temptation.  It is ironic that Jesus went into the desert to be tempted but the monks seem to have gone there to escape temptation. 

The area we walked through is likely where Jesus went when he was tempted in the desert.  It is a very solitary place…  I was given a GPS (thanks Mom and Dad!) before I went to Israel and it turned out to be a better gift than they probably know.  Although I didn’t have any maps for it, I had three points entered into it: the start, the end, and one land mark along the way.  Just knowing where you are and where are going is huge help – even if you can’t see the mountain in between.

We ended up walking through En Gedi park at night. It was a little unreal walking through one of the best preserved Chalcolithic temples in the world by moon light.  I can see why David chose that area to hide from King Saul.  He probably took his flock there as a shepherd and spent many a lonesome and sleepless night in that country.  He was brave when no one else was watching.  Why not let a lion take one of the lambs?  No one will know any differently.  It is interesting that both Moses and David were shepherds before they became kings.  Later, Ezekiel would lament that his people were like sheep without a shepherd and Micah looked forward to a day when out of Bethlehem would come one who would be a ‘shepherd for my people Israel’.  The Shepherd has come although his voice quiet now – so quiet.

Timed Exposure of Chalcolithic Temple overlooking the Dead Sea
The spring at Ein Gedi
Roman Fort on the Plateau above Ein Gedi