Wednesday Bible Study: No, this isn't about Jesus

Isaiah 7 contains another prophecy that gets read in Christian churches during Advent, supposedly because it's a prediction of the birth of Jesus. Err, no. What's going on here is that the northern kingdom of Israel is preparing for war against the kingdom of Judah, and both are in danger from the Assyrian empire. So Isaiah predicts the birth of a warrior who will defeat Judah's enemies to a woman who is alive as he prophecies, not 700 years in the future. Furthermore, Jesus was never called Immanuel anywhere in the New Testament. 

A couple of additional notes. Since Isaiah prophecies that this will happen in the near future, it's kind of strange that the actual occurrence is never mentioned since the book covers at least a subsequent century. Second, the mother will be a "young woman," not a "virgin," as the term is mistranslated in the gospels. (Hebrew Almah means young woman; virgin is "bethulah.") The translators of the NIV feel they're forced to acknowledge this, but they only manage to do it in a footnote. That Assyria did in fact destroy the northern Kingdom of Israel is historically accurate. However, although Isaiah predicts that Ahaz will ultimately prevail, that contradicts the story in Chronicles, in which the king of Syria does the opposite -- delivers Ahaz to Israel, where he is killed.

7 When Ahaz son of Jotham, the son of Uzziah, was king of Judah, King Rezin of Aram and Pekah son of Remaliah king of Israel marched up to fight against Jerusalem, but they could not overpower it.

² Now the house of David was told, “Aram has allied itself with^[a] Ephraim”; so the hearts of Ahaz and his people were shaken, as the trees of the forest are shaken by the wind.

³ Then the Lord said to Isaiah, “Go out, you and your son Shear-Jashub,^[b] to meet Ahaz at the end of the aqueduct of the Upper Pool, on the road to the Launderer’s Field. ⁴ Say to him, ‘Be careful, keep calm and don’t be afraid. Do not lose heart because of these two smoldering stubs of firewood—because of the fierce anger of Rezin and Aram and of the son of Remaliah. ⁵ Aram, Ephraim and Remaliah’s son have plotted your ruin, saying, ⁶ “Let us invade Judah; let us tear it apart and divide it among ourselves, and make the son of Tabeel king over it.” ⁷ Yet this is what the Sovereign Lord says:

“‘It will not take place,
    it will not happen,
⁸ for the head of Aram is Damascus,
    and the head of Damascus is only Rezin.
Within sixty-five years
    Ephraim will be too shattered to be a people.
⁹ The head of Ephraim is Samaria,
    and the head of Samaria is only Remaliah’s son.
If you do not stand firm in your faith,
    you will not stand at all.’”

¹⁰ Again the Lord spoke to Ahaz, ¹¹ “Ask the Lord your God for a sign, whether in the deepest depths or in the highest heights.”

¹² But Ahaz said, “I will not ask; I will not put the Lord to the test.”

¹³ Then Isaiah said, “Hear now, you house of David! Is it not enough to try the patience of humans? Will you try the patience of my God also? ¹⁴ Therefore the Lord himself will give you^[c] a sign: The virgin^[d] will conceive and give birth to a son, and^[e] will call him Immanuel.^{[f] 15} He will be eating curds and honey when he knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right, ¹⁶ for before the boy knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right, the land of the two kings you dread will be laid waste. ¹⁷ The Lord will bring on you and on your people and on the house of your father a time unlike any since Ephraim broke away from Judah—he will bring the king of Assyria.”

Assyria, the Lord’s Instrument

¹⁸ In that day the Lord will whistle for flies from the Nile delta in Egypt and for bees from the land of Assyria. ¹⁹ They will all come and settle in the steep ravines and in the crevices in the rocks, on all the thornbushes and at all the water holes. ²⁰ In that day the Lord will use a razor hired from beyond the Euphrates River—the king of Assyria—to shave your head and private parts, and to cut off your beard also. ²¹ In that day, a person will keep alive a young cow and two goats. ²² And because of the abundance of the milk they give, there will be curds to eat. All who remain in the land will eat curds and honey. ²³ In that day, in every place where there were a thousand vines worth a thousand silver shekels,^[g] there will be only briers and thorns. ²⁴ Hunters will go there with bow and arrow, for the land will be covered with briers and thorns. ²⁵ As for all the hills once cultivated by the hoe, you will no longer go there for fear of the briers and thorns; they will become places where cattle are turned loose and where sheep run.

Footnotes

1. Isaiah 7:2 Or has set up camp in
2. Isaiah 7:3 Shear-Jashub means a remnant will return.
3. Isaiah 7:14 The Hebrew is plural.
4. Isaiah 7:14 Or young woman
5. Isaiah 7:14 Masoretic Text; Dead Sea Scrolls son, and he or son, and they
6. Isaiah 7:14 Immanuel means God with us.
7. Isaiah 7:23 That is, about 25 pounds or about 12 kilograms

And to better explain the previous post . . .

Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post and Blue Origin, a company that does business with the federal government. The same day the Post announced it would not be endorsing a presidential candidate, Donald J. Trump met personally with executives of Blue Origin. Jonathan Last explains, although presumably you can figure it out for yourself:

This was neither a coincidence nor a case of Bezos and Trump being caught doing something they wished to keep hidden. The entire point of the exercise, at least for Trump, was that it be public.

What we witnessed on Friday was not a case of censorship or a failure of the media. It had nothing to do with journalism or the Washington Post. It was something much, much more consequential. It was about oligarchy, the rule of law, and the failure of the democratic order.

When Bezos decreed that the newspaper he owned could not endorse Trump’s opponent, it was a transparent act of submission borne of an intuitive understanding of the differences between the candidates.

Bezos understood that if he antagonized Kamala Harris and Harris became president, he would face no consequences. A Harris administration would not target his businesses because the Harris administration would—like all presidential administrations not headed by Trump—adhere to the rule of law.

Bezos likewise understood that the inverse was not true. If he continued to antagonize Trump and Trump became president, his businesses very much would be targeted.

So bending the knee to Trump was the smart play. All upside, no downside.

What Trump understood was that Bezos’s submission would be of limited use if it was kept quiet. Because the point of dominating Bezos wasn’t just to dominate Bezos. It was to send a message to every other businessman, entrepreneur, and corporation in America: that these are the rules of the game. If you are nice to Trump, the government will be nice to you. If you criticize Trump, the government will be used against you.

 

It turns out democracy dies in the light.

Violation of copyright

 So sue me. The Washington Post has declined to endorse a presidential candidate. The Post is paywalled, so the only way I can share Alexandra Petri's column with you is by ripping it off. So here it is.

The Washington Post is not bothering to endorse a candidate in the 2024 presidential election. (Jeff Bezos, the founder of Blue Origin and the founder and executive chairman of Amazon and Amazon Web Services, also owns The Post.)

We as a newspaper suddenly remembered, less than two weeks before the election, that we had a robust tradition 50 years ago of not telling anyone what to do with their vote for president. It is time we got back to those “roots,” I’m told!

Roots are important, of course. As recently as the 1970s, The Post did not endorse a candidate for president. As recently as centuries ago, there was no Post and the country had a king! Go even further back, and the entire continent of North America was totally uninhabitable, and we were all spineless creatures who lived in the ocean, and certainly there were no Post subscribers.

But if I were the paper, I would be a little embarrassed that it has fallen to me, the humor columnist, to make our presidential endorsement. I will spare you the suspense: I am endorsing Kamala Harris for president, because I like elections and want to keep having them.

Let me tell you something. I am having a baby (It’s a boy!), and he is expected on Jan. 6, 2025 (It’s a … Proud Boy?). This is either slightly funny or not at all funny. This whole election, I have been lurching around, increasingly heavily pregnant, nauseated, unwieldy, full of the commingled hopes and terrors that come every time you are on the verge of introducing a new person to the world.

Well, that world will look very different, depending on the outcome of November’s election, and I care which world my kid gets born into. I also live here myself. And I happen to care about the people who are already here, in this world. Come to think of it, I have a lot of reasons for caring how the election goes. I think it should be obvious that this is not an election for sitting out.

The case for Donald Trump is “I erroneously think the economy used to be better? I know that he has made many ominous-sounding threats about mass deportations, going after his political enemies, shutting down the speech of those who disagree with him (especially media outlets), and that he wants to make things worse for almost every category of person — people with wombs, immigrants, transgender people, journalists, protesters, people of color — but … maybe he’ll forget.”

“But maybe he’ll forget” is not enough to hang a country on!

Embarrassingly enough, I like this country. But everything good about it has been the product of centuries of people who had no reason to hope for better but chose to believe that better things were possible, clawing their way uphill — protesting, marching, voting, and, yes, doing the work of journalism — to build this fragile thing called democracy. But to be fragile is not the same as to be perishable, as G.K. Chesterton wrote. Simply do not break a glass, and it will last a thousand years. Smash it, and it will not last an instant. Democracy is like that: fragile, but only if you shatter it.

Trust is like that, too, as newspapers know.

I’m just a humor columnist. I only know what’s happening because our actual journalists are out there reporting, knowing that their editors have their backs, that there’s no one too powerful to report on, that we would never pull a punch out of fear. That’s what our readers deserve and expect: that we are saying what we really think, reporting what we really see; that if we think Trump should not return to the White House and Harris would make a fine president, we’re going to be able to say so.

That’s why I, the humor columnist, am endorsing Kamala Harris by myself!

Sunday Sermonette: Magic mushrooms?

Isaiah 6 features a vision that seems to have inspired later fever dreams, including very likely the last book of the Christian Bible, Revelation, which draws on Isaiah and other sources in the Tanakh. Again, however, I must remind you that trying to force Jesus into this prophecy is extremely tendentious. This is about the desolation and eventual restoration of Judah. The Messiah, who we will meet in the next chapter, is a military leader who will be King of Judah and defeat its enemies. Obviously, that does not describe Jesus, which is why they needed to come up with the idea that he'll eventually return to earth, with the reestablishment of the state of Israel as a prerequisite for what's supposed to come next. Yeah, it's all complete nonsense.

6 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. ² Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. ³ And they were calling to one another:

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty;
    the whole earth is full of his glory.”

⁴ At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.

⁵ “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”

⁶ Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. ⁷ With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”

⁸ Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”

And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”

⁹ He said, “Go and tell this people:

“‘Be ever hearing, but never understanding;
    be ever seeing, but never perceiving.’
¹⁰ Make the heart of this people calloused;
    make their ears dull
    and close their eyes.^[a]
Otherwise they might see with their eyes,
    hear with their ears,
    understand with their hearts,
and turn and be healed.”

¹¹ Then I said, “For how long, Lord?”

And he answered:

“Until the cities lie ruined
    and without inhabitant,
until the houses are left deserted
    and the fields ruined and ravaged,
¹² until the Lord has sent everyone far away
    and the land is utterly forsaken.
¹³ And though a tenth remains in the land,
    it will again be laid waste.
But as the terebinth and oak
    leave stumps when they are cut down,
    so the holy seed will be the stump in the land.”

Footnotes

1. Isaiah 6:10 Hebrew; Septuagint ‘You will be ever hearing, but never understanding; / you will be ever seeing, but never perceiving.’ / ¹⁰ This people’s heart has become calloused; / they hardly hear with their ears, / and they have closed their eyes

It can happen here

Christopher Browning, in NYRB, reviews three books on Hitler's seizure of power. Unfortunately it's paywalled and they don't offer gift links. You can read the first few paragraphs here, and maybe you can find a copy of the new issue if you want to read the whole thing.

I'll just make a couple of points by way of summary. The first is that Hitler never got close to an electoral majority in a real election, and in fact the Nazi party's electoral fortunes were on the decline in 1932. But a cabal of conservative plutocrats who wanted to end the Weimar Republic and install an autocratic regime thought they could use him to seize power, and then control him. This was, you might say, a miscalculation. Browning quotes Benjamin Carter Hett:

The [political] crisis and deadlock of 1932 and 1933, to which Hitler appeared as the only solution, was manufactured by a political right wing that wanted to exclude more than half the population from political representation . . . . To this end, a succession of conservative politicians . . . courted the Nazis as the only way to retain power on terms congenial to them. Hitler's regime was the result.

The second is that once Hitler did assume power, all opposition was suppressed by an orgy of violence, using Hitler's thuggish militia who were granted status as official police. In case you are thinking that this might galvanize public opinion against the regime, the opposite happened. People quickly fell into line with Nazi ideology, not just for show. They internalized it. Browning goes on to summarize Peter Fritzsche who:

 makes the compelling argument that violence not only silenced Nazi opponents but was also essential in building support. The ongoing violence, choreographed as public rituals of humiliation that portrayed Nazi opponents as weak and ridiculous, turned entertained spectators into accomplices by virtue of their "voyeuristic pleasure." The "wave of denunciation" that swept over Germany broadened the ranks of complicity further. . . . Many flocked to the Nazis as opportunistic "March casualties," but for many others the belief in national community and a restored . . . people's community, now understood as defined by racial exclusion rather than political, social and religious inclusion, was sincere.

Let me conclude with Hett's description of Hitler as featuring:

 

. . . insecurity, intolerance of criticism, bombastic claims about his own achievements, and scorn for intellectuals and experts.

 

Yep folks, that's where we are. Believe it.

The Great Pumpkin fails to appear

I have been pointing out here for at least four or five years that Orange Julius, never intelligent, always ignorant, never capable of a thought for anything but himself, was mentally deteriorating. I got a lot of idiotic comments to the effect that the APA doesn't allow public armchair diagnoses. Fortunately I'm a) not a member and b) not presuming to say exactly what the diagnosis is. It looks more like a form of frontotemporal dementia than Alzheimer's disease, but it could be both.

 

The scandal is that the corporate media conspired to cover up this fact, while simultaneously relentlessly hounding Joe Biden about what appears to be essentially normal cognitive aging. But it's becoming impossible for the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and other plutocrat-owned media to keep up the charade. Jeff Tiedrich compiles the straight dope on this:

 

imagine you’re a campaign manager. you send your candidate out to do a softball town hall, where he’ll answer easy questions gently lobbed at him by adoring cultists — but instead of smacking those softball questions out of the park, he decides instead to “make it into a music,” confusing the shit out of his audience for 39 excruciating minutes, as he wobbles unsteadily like an animatronic dildo.

then your guy appears in front of a room full of women who are angry about the loss of their reproductive rights, and brags about being the hombré who ended Roe.

and then he gets up in front of skeptical Latino voters, and tells a guy who is speaking through an interpreter that people who need interpreters are destroying America.

your worst nightmare is coming true, right before your very eyes. you had hoped to keep evidence of your candidate’s rapidly-increasing dementia under wraps — but now it’s advanced to the point where it can no longer be hidden. for fuck’s sake, even the normally-compliant lapdog press is pointing it out.

 

He chickened out of a 60 minutes interview, then he refused the offer from CNN of a town hall and left the stage to Kamala Harris to pummel him in prime time -- twice. He even canceled an appearance at an NRA convention. That's how bad it's gotten. All he does any more are the 90 Minute Hates where his brain dead cultists cheer for his gibberish -- but even they can't take it any more and they're leaving early, if they're allowed to escape.  

 

I offer for your delectation and delight his explanation of what he's going to do about grocery prices (in which he urges everyone to vote on January 5):

 

So, you know, it’s such a great question in the sense that people don’t think of grocery. You know, it sounds like not such an important word when you talk about homes and everything else, right? But more people tell me about grocery bills, where the price of bacon, the price of lettuce, the price of tomatoes, they tell me. And we’re going to do a lot of things.

You know, our farmers aren’t being treated properly. And we had a deal with China, and it was a great deal — I never mentioned it because once covid came in, I said, that was a bridge too far because I had a great relationship with President Xi [Jinping]. And he’s a fierce man and he’s a man that likes China and I understand that. But we had a deal and he was perfect on that deal, $50 billion he was going to buy. We were doing numbers like you wouldn’t believe, for the farmer. But the farmers are very badly hurt. The farmers in this country, we’re going to get them straightened out. We’re going to get your prices down.

But you asked another question about safety and also about Black population jobs and Hispanic population in particular those two. So when millions of people pour into our country, they’re having a devastating effect on Black families and Hispanic families more than any others. I think it’s going to spread to a lot of other places.

I think it’s going to spread to unions. I think unions are going to have a big problem because, you know, employers are just not going to pay the price. They’re going to—and it’s going to be—it’s a very bad thing that’s happening.

So they’re coming in. Many are coming in from jails and prisons and mental institutions, insane asylums. That’s like, you know, step above, right? Insane asylum. And whenever I go, Hannibal Lecter, you know what I’m talking about. They always go—the fake news. That’s a lot of fake news back there, too.

They always mention—you know, it’s a way of demeaning, they say, ‘Hannibal Lecter, why would he mention?’ Well, you know why, because he was a sick puppy, and we have sick puppies coming into our country. I figured that’s a lot—that’s better than wasting a lot of words. You just say, ‘Hannibal Lecter. We don’t want him.’ But. But they always sort of say, ‘Why would he say that?’ I do it for a lot of reasons.

But I do it because we are allowing some very bad people into our country. And they’re coming as terrorists. You know, you saw the other day, last month they had the record number of terrorists. I had a month — and I love Border Patrol.

Did you see they gave me a full endorsement two days ago? Border Patrol.

The Border Patrol. And they’re great. And, you know, they want to do their job. They don’t want to let these people come in. They look at them. They can tell. They can look at somebody, say good, bad. They say what’s coming into our country now, it’s having a huge negative impact on Black families and on Hispanic families and ultimately on everybody.

And we’re going to close that border so tight. It’s going to be closed. And I said the two things I’m going to do, first, we’re going to close that border—and people are going to come in. You want people to come in. We need people to come in. People are going to come into our country legally.

You know, it’s so unfair. You have people that are waiting on a system, in a line and they’ve been waiting in this line. You know how long? For years, 10 years, 12 years and they study and they take tests. And then people come. I actually say, ‘Why don’t you just go and just come on across?’ I tell people that it’s terrible, right? I said, ‘Go out. You’re incredible.’ They say, ‘What can I do to speed up the process?’ I say, ‘You know what, go to the southern border. I’ll see you on the other side.’ It’s so unfair.

But we’re going to have them come in legally. You have to see what they have to do. They take tests on, you know, who was the first one here? What date was this? What does 1776 mean? All this stuff.

And these other people are coming in and they’re affecting the school systems and they’re affecting the hospital system. I mean, if you take a look at what’s going on in Springfield, Ohio, a town of 50,000 people, they’ve just added 32,000 people. Illegal immigrants. And we’re not going to put up with it.

And we’re going to take care of your costs are going to come down, and you’re not going to have a problem with — because the biggest problem, and I’m hearing it from Black people and to a lesser extent right now, but it’ll be the same, Hispanic people.

And I’ll tell you what, our poll numbers have gone through the roof. With Black and Hispanic, have gone through the roof. And I like that. I like that. I like that. So we’re going to take care of it. You will be — I’ll tell you, if everything works out, if everybody gets out and votes on January 5th.Or before.

You know, it used to be, you’d have a date. Today, you can vote two months before, probably three months after. They don’t know what the hell they’re doing. But we’re going to straighten it all out. We’re going to straighten that out. We’re going to straighten our election process out, too. That’s going to be important, also.

So thank you very much, darling. We’re going to get it straight.

 

 

But keep in mind that a vote for Ronald T. Dump is a vote for J.D. Vance.

 

Wednesday Bible Study: Waxing metaphorical

Most commentators think that Isaiah 4 really should not have been separated from Ch. 3. It's just more imagery about the prophesied restoration of Jerusalem and the glory of Judah. However, it is, well, kind of weird. Remember in the previous chapter that God has taken away all of the women's jewelry and finery, made them bald and smell bad. So now, with the restoration, seven women are begging one man to marry them all. This, the author believes, will set things right. 

Chapter 5 is very lengthy. It gets back to the fall of the kingdom, through a very elaborate metaphor about a failed vineyard. Other than the extended metaphor, it doesn't really add anything. Well, it also criticizes excessive alcohol consumption. Anyway, here are both chapters.

 

4 ¹ In that day seven women
    will take hold of one man
and say, “We will eat our own food
    and provide our own clothes;
only let us be called by your name.
    Take away our disgrace!”

The Branch of the Lord

² In that day the Branch of the Lord will be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the land will be the pride and glory of the survivors in Israel. ³ Those who are left in Zion, who remain in Jerusalem, will be called holy, all who are recorded among the living in Jerusalem. ⁴ The Lord will wash away the filth of the women of Zion; he will cleanse the bloodstains from Jerusalem by a spirit^[a] of judgment and a spirit^[b] of fire. ⁵ Then the Lord will create over all of Mount Zion and over those who assemble there a cloud of smoke by day and a glow of flaming fire by night; over everything the glory^[c] will be a canopy. ⁶ It will be a shelter and shade from the heat of the day, and a refuge and hiding place from the storm and rain.

Footnotes

1. Isaiah 4:4 Or the Spirit
2. Isaiah 4:4 Or the Spirit
3. Isaiah 4:5 Or over all the glory there

 

5 I will sing for the one I love
    a song about his vineyard:
My loved one had a vineyard
    on a fertile hillside.
² He dug it up and cleared it of stones
    and planted it with the choicest vines.
He built a watchtower in it
    and cut out a winepress as well.
Then he looked for a crop of good grapes,
    but it yielded only bad fruit.

³ “Now you dwellers in Jerusalem and people of Judah,
    judge between me and my vineyard.
⁴ What more could have been done for my vineyard
    than I have done for it?
When I looked for good grapes,
    why did it yield only bad?
⁵ Now I will tell you
    what I am going to do to my vineyard:
I will take away its hedge,
    and it will be destroyed;
I will break down its wall,
    and it will be trampled.
⁶ I will make it a wasteland,
    neither pruned nor cultivated,
    and briers and thorns will grow there.
I will command the clouds
    not to rain on it.”

⁷ The vineyard of the Lord Almighty
    is the nation of Israel,
and the people of Judah
    are the vines he delighted in.
And he looked for justice, but saw bloodshed;
    for righteousness, but heard cries of distress.

Woes and Judgments

⁸ Woe to you who add house to house
    and join field to field
till no space is left
    and you live alone in the land.

⁹ The Lord Almighty has declared in my hearing:

“Surely the great houses will become desolate,
    the fine mansions left without occupants.
¹⁰ A ten-acre vineyard will produce only a bath^[a] of wine;
    a homer^[b] of seed will yield only an ephah^[c] of grain.”

¹¹ Woe to those who rise early in the morning
    to run after their drinks,
who stay up late at night
    till they are inflamed with wine.
¹² They have harps and lyres at their banquets,
    pipes and timbrels and wine,
but they have no regard for the deeds of the Lord,
    no respect for the work of his hands.
¹³ Therefore my people will go into exile
    for lack of understanding;
those of high rank will die of hunger
    and the common people will be parched with thirst.
¹⁴ Therefore Death expands its jaws,
    opening wide its mouth;
into it will descend their nobles and masses
    with all their brawlers and revelers.
¹⁵ So people will be brought low
    and everyone humbled,
    the eyes of the arrogant humbled.
¹⁶ But the Lord Almighty will be exalted by his justice,
    and the holy God will be proved holy by his righteous acts.
¹⁷ Then sheep will graze as in their own pasture;
    lambs will feed^[d] among the ruins of the rich.

¹⁸ Woe to those who draw sin along with cords of deceit,
    and wickedness as with cart ropes,
¹⁹ to those who say, “Let God hurry;
    let him hasten his work
    so we may see it.
The plan of the Holy One of Israel—
    let it approach, let it come into view,
    so we may know it.”

²⁰ Woe to those who call evil good
    and good evil,
who put darkness for light
    and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet
    and sweet for bitter.

²¹ Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes
    and clever in their own sight.

²² Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine
    and champions at mixing drinks,
²³ who acquit the guilty for a bribe,
    but deny justice to the innocent.
²⁴ Therefore, as tongues of fire lick up straw
    and as dry grass sinks down in the flames,
so their roots will decay
    and their flowers blow away like dust;
for they have rejected the law of the Lord Almighty
    and spurned the word of the Holy One of Israel.
²⁵ Therefore the Lord’s anger burns against his people;
    his hand is raised and he strikes them down.
The mountains shake,
    and the dead bodies are like refuse in the streets.

Yet for all this, his anger is not turned away,
    his hand is still upraised.

²⁶ He lifts up a banner for the distant nations,
    he whistles for those at the ends of the earth.
Here they come,
    swiftly and speedily!
²⁷ Not one of them grows tired or stumbles,
    not one slumbers or sleeps;
not a belt is loosened at the waist,
    not a sandal strap is broken.
²⁸ Their arrows are sharp,
    all their bows are strung;
their horses’ hooves seem like flint,
    their chariot wheels like a whirlwind.
²⁹ Their roar is like that of the lion,
    they roar like young lions;
they growl as they seize their prey
    and carry it off with no one to rescue.
³⁰ In that day they will roar over it
    like the roaring of the sea.
And if one looks at the land,
    there is only darkness and distress;
    even the sun will be darkened by clouds.

Footnotes

1. Isaiah 5:10 That is, about 6 gallons or about 22 liters
2. Isaiah 5:10 That is, probably about 360 pounds or about 160 kilograms
3. Isaiah 5:10 That is, probably about 36 pounds or about 16 kilograms
4. Isaiah 5:17 Septuagint; Hebrew / strangers will eat

1.  

 

Sunday Sermonette: What displeases God, what is an evil fate for humans

First an editor's note. The Book of Isaiah is long - 66 mostly very long chapters. It would take the better part of a year to get through it reading one chapter at a time. I want to get on with this project, so I'm going to compress our reading of Isaiah. It's quite repetitive -- all this prophesying of the downfall of Judah isn't really adding much that's new, so we don't need to go through it all in detail.

Chapter 3 is worth a look, however. Remember what's going on here. Judah is under pressure from the Assyrian empire, the northern kingdom of Israel has been destroyed. It's not clear exactly where things stood when this was written, but most likely Judah has been forced to surrender the treasures of the temple in order to buy off a siege and is now a tributary kingdom. Isaiah is predicting worse things to come, and attributing it to Yahweh's displeasure with the people's behavior. Among their punishments will be hunger, but also rule by children and women. Isaiah speaks generally that "they parade their sin like Sodom," but the only sin he describes specifically is that women wear fancy clothes, jewelry, and perfume; and flirt. He goes on at great length about this, then he threatens them with losing all their finery, losing their hair, and smelling bad. Incel indeed, it seems.

3 See now, the Lord,
    the Lord Almighty,
is about to take from Jerusalem and Judah
    both supply and support:
all supplies of food and all supplies of water,
²     the hero and the warrior,
the judge and the prophet,
    the diviner and the elder,
³ the captain of fifty and the man of rank,
    the counselor, skilled craftsman and clever enchanter.

⁴ “I will make mere youths their officials;
    children will rule over them.”

⁵ People will oppress each other—
    man against man, neighbor against neighbor.
The young will rise up against the old,
    the nobody against the honored.

⁶ A man will seize one of his brothers
    in his father’s house, and say,
“You have a cloak, you be our leader;
    take charge of this heap of ruins!”
⁷ But in that day he will cry out,
    “I have no remedy.
I have no food or clothing in my house;
    do not make me the leader of the people.”

⁸ Jerusalem staggers,
    Judah is falling;
their words and deeds are against the Lord,
    defying his glorious presence.
⁹ The look on their faces testifies against them;
    they parade their sin like Sodom;
    they do not hide it.
Woe to them!
    They have brought disaster upon themselves.

¹⁰ Tell the righteous it will be well with them,
    for they will enjoy the fruit of their deeds.
¹¹ Woe to the wicked!
    Disaster is upon them!
They will be paid back
    for what their hands have done.

¹² Youths oppress my people,
    women rule over them.
My people, your guides lead you astray;
    they turn you from the path.

¹³ The Lord takes his place in court;
    he rises to judge the people.
¹⁴ The Lord enters into judgment
    against the elders and leaders of his people:
“It is you who have ruined my vineyard;
    the plunder from the poor is in your houses.
¹⁵ What do you mean by crushing my people
    and grinding the faces of the poor?”
declares the Lord, the Lord Almighty.

¹⁶ The Lord says,
    “The women of Zion are haughty,
walking along with outstretched necks,
    flirting with their eyes,
strutting along with swaying hips,
    with ornaments jingling on their ankles.
¹⁷ Therefore the Lord will bring sores on the heads of the women of Zion;
    the Lord will make their scalps bald.”

¹⁸ In that day the Lord will snatch away their finery: the bangles and headbands and crescent necklaces, ¹⁹ the earrings and bracelets and veils, ²⁰ the headdresses and anklets and sashes, the perfume bottles and charms, ²¹ the signet rings and nose rings, ²² the fine robes and the capes and cloaks, the purses ²³ and mirrors, and the linen garments and tiaras and shawls.

²⁴ Instead of fragrance there will be a stench;
    instead of a sash, a rope;
instead of well-dressed hair, baldness;
    instead of fine clothing, sackcloth;
    instead of beauty, branding.
²⁵ Your men will fall by the sword,
    your warriors in battle.
²⁶ The gates of Zion will lament and mourn;
    destitute, she will sit on the ground.

Closure?

I don't know about that. My siblings are coming to my place today. We're going to plant a tree and scatter the ashes of our parents. My father actually died in 2011, and my mother died last August, just over a year ago. I've had the ashes in the cardboard boxes from the crematories ever since. There didn't seem to be any hurry to do this. We had events for their friends and family in due time, this is just something my sister wants to do now.

 

Many people -- actually throughout history almost everyone -- are very particular about how to process corpses and honor the dead. Elaborate burials go back to the paleolithic, and probably started earlier than any surviving evidence we have found. Humans are probably not the only animals that are aware of their mortality -- elephants seem to be, and perhaps some other mammals and birds have an idea of it. But we are also almost certainly the only animals that don't actually believe they are mortal. The compulsion to believe that some sort of essence endures, and must be properly treated and honored in order to exist in comfort, is nearly universal. 

 

A strange irony is that the people who believe most fervently in an afterlife are also the most insistent that death must be deferred at all costs. They're the ones who won't allow the doctors to withdraw artificial life support from their brain dead relatives. I'm not sure what to make of this. I had the health care proxy and power of attorney for my mother, and with the full approval of my siblings our instructions were to make no heroic efforts to prolong my mother's life. No hospitalization, no artificial feeding, only measures to relieve any suffering. She had no quality of life in the end, and prolonging the mortal husk would have been pointless. But the people who most claim to believe most fervently that death is just a passage to a better state of being are precisely the people who would condemn me.

 

Perhaps you can explain it.

Yes, we caught the perp

Tip o' the hat to friend of the blog Don Q for this from Kevin Drum. (Sorry, pop up ad is a bit hard to get rid of.) I recently attributed our national decline into madness and depravity to Faux News, but Drum does a more careful analysis and systematically rules out other suspects. Yes, they have accomplices, and they draw on some deeply embedded national pathologies, but Rupert Murdoch is the Professor Moriarity, the Dark Lord, the Godfather of our woes.

 

He actually launched his invasion of the U.S. back in the 1980s, while I was in graduate school for public policy, and we noticed it even then. He was buying up newspapers, which still mattered, and local TV stations, and he was hawking outrageous garbage even then. Yes, he developed a symbiosis with The Vulgar Pigboy* and other shit peddlers, but they wouldn't have been nearly as effective without Murdoch. It's nice that Dick Cheney has endorsed Harris, but back when he was the de facto President of the United States he spent more time on Faux News and Pigboy's show than he did with his hand up Chimpy's back.  

Murdoch gave us the Iraq war, and now he's given us Orange Adolf. Hopefully he'll die very soon, but he's trying to leave his evil empire to his son Lachlan who has pledged to carry on as the new Dr. Evil. That's being contested in court right now, so let's hope for the best.

*That's the late unlamented Rush Limbaugh for those who haven't been paying attention.

Wednesday Bible Study: Eschatology

Excerpts from Isaiah 2 are read in the Episcopal church during Advent. (I don't know about the practice in other denominations.) Specifically, verse 4, in the KJV:

And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.

 

Err, whatever this may mean, it sure as hell isn't foretelling the coming of Jesus.  More wars have been fought in the name of Jesus, more blood spilled, more people massacred and tortured to death, than in the name of any other religious figure. This vision has nothing to do with anything imagined in Christian theology. It is about the exaltation of the kingdom of Judah and the glorification of its capital Jerusalem, AKA Zion. Christian theologians have tied themselves into pretzels trying to make the Old Testament prophecies about their own absurd beliefs, but it doesn't work. Sorry.

 

2 This is what Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem:

² In the last days

the mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established
    as the highest of the mountains;
it will be exalted above the hills,
    and all nations will stream to it.

³ Many peoples will come and say,

“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
    to the temple of the God of Jacob.
He will teach us his ways,
    so that we may walk in his paths.”
The law will go out from Zion,
    the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
⁴ He will judge between the nations
    and will settle disputes for many peoples.
They will beat their swords into plowshares
    and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation,
    nor will they train for war anymore.

⁵ Come, descendants of Jacob,
    let us walk in the light of the Lord.

The Day of the Lord

⁶ You, Lord, have abandoned your people,
    the descendants of Jacob.
They are full of superstitions from the East;
    they practice divination like the Philistines
    and embrace pagan customs.
⁷ Their land is full of silver and gold;
    there is no end to their treasures.
Their land is full of horses;
    there is no end to their chariots.
⁸ Their land is full of idols;
    they bow down to the work of their hands,
    to what their fingers have made.
⁹ So people will be brought low
    and everyone humbled—
    do not forgive them.^[a]

¹⁰ Go into the rocks, hide in the ground
    from the fearful presence of the Lord
    and the splendor of his majesty!
¹¹ The eyes of the arrogant will be humbled
    and human pride brought low;
the Lord alone will be exalted in that day.

¹² The Lord Almighty has a day in store
    for all the proud and lofty,
for all that is exalted
    (and they will be humbled),
¹³ for all the cedars of Lebanon, tall and lofty,
    and all the oaks of Bashan,
¹⁴ for all the towering mountains
    and all the high hills,
¹⁵ for every lofty tower
    and every fortified wall,
¹⁶ for every trading ship^[b]
    and every stately vessel.
¹⁷ The arrogance of man will be brought low
    and human pride humbled;
the Lord alone will be exalted in that day,
¹⁸     and the idols will totally disappear.

¹⁹ People will flee to caves in the rocks
    and to holes in the ground
from the fearful presence of the Lord
    and the splendor of his majesty,
    when he rises to shake the earth.
²⁰ In that day people will throw away
    to the moles and bats
their idols of silver and idols of gold,
    which they made to worship.
²¹ They will flee to caverns in the rocks
    and to the overhanging crags
from the fearful presence of the Lord
    and the splendor of his majesty,
    when he rises to shake the earth.

²² Stop trusting in mere humans,
    who have but a breath in their nostrils.
    Why hold them in esteem?

Footnotes

1. Isaiah 2:9 Or not raise them up
2. Isaiah 2:16 Hebrew every ship of Tarshish

 

The World Gone Mad

When I saw this headline in the NYT I thought it must be a spoof:

Meteorologists Face Harassment and Death Threats Amid Hurricane Disinformation

 

Nope. It's real. People are actually threatening to murder meteorologists because they're covering up the true fact that the government controls the weather. 

Many of the falsehoods about the hurricanes have been spread by conservatives and supporters of former President Donald J. Trump, including a former Trump administration official and a Republican congresswoman.

Of all the conspiracy theories and disinformation that have circulated, meteorologists say one falsehood that has especially gotten out of hand is the claim that the government is creating or controlling the storms. Forecasters have been harassed for either failing to promote these claims or for disseminating accurate information that counters them.

 

But wait, there's more:

 

Emergency workers have also been targeted with abuse. In the aftermath of Helene, Federal Emergency Management Agency personnel received a significant amount of harassment, including false claims that the agency was stealing donations and diverting disaster aid to Ukraine. Calls were made for residents to form militias to defend against those workers, who also faced antisemitic and misogynistic threats.

 

This isn't even worthy of a headline or its own article, it appears. I have to admit I'm starting to wonder whether electoral democracy can still work. But I can't think of an alternative. 

UPDATE: I cannot believe this:

Some FEMA operations paused in North Carolina after reports National Guard troops saw ‘armed militia’ threatening them

Sunday Sermonette: Now we're prophesying

The Book of Isaiah is important in both Jewish tradition and Christian theology, and therefore a complicated subject. The first thing to understand is that like some other books of the Tanakh, it's really a compilation of material. The current consensus is that it consists of three works. The first, as it purports at the beginning, really was written in the 8th Century BC. The context is that the Assyrian empire, under the Shalmaneser V and his successor Sargon II, had destroyed the northern Kingdom of Israel. Judah survived a siege of Jerusalem but was reduced to a tributary kingdom. (It's not entirely clear whether this was concluded under Shalmaneser or Sargon.) 

 

The writer attributes the kingdom's misfortune to apostasy: Yahweh has removed his protection because the people have failed to follow his laws or do him proper worship. However, Isaiah prophesies that the glory of Judah and its relationship with Yahweh will ultimately be restored. Christian theologians made a huge stretch, interpreting this as prophesying the coming of Jesus, whereas if you simply read it the plain and unambiguous sense is that it refers to the restoration of the kingdom of Judah and its religion.

The second portion of the book we have today was in fact written during the Babylonian exile. In case you've forgotten, the Assyrian empire fell to Babylon in the late 7th Century BC. The Babylonian emperor Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the kingdom of Judah in 587 BC, and deported its elite citizens, including the royal household, military leadership, and the literate priesthood, to Babylon. It was easy enough for the author of the second part of Isiah to prophesy what had already happened! 

In 539 BC, Cyrus the Great of Persia conquered Babylon, and he allowed the exiles to return, bringing about the restoration of Judah and the rebuilding of the Temple. The final chapters of Isaiah were written in the post-exilic period. We'll cross those bridges when we come to them.

1 The vision concerning Judah and Jerusalem that Isaiah son of Amoz saw during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.

A Rebellious Nation

² Hear me, you heavens! Listen, earth!
    For the Lord has spoken:
“I reared children and brought them up,
    but they have rebelled against me.
³ The ox knows its master,
    the donkey its owner’s manger,
but Israel does not know,
    my people do not understand.”

⁴ Woe to the sinful nation,
    a people whose guilt is great,
a brood of evildoers,
    children given to corruption!
They have forsaken the Lord;
    they have spurned the Holy One of Israel
    and turned their backs on him.

⁵ Why should you be beaten anymore?
    Why do you persist in rebellion?
Your whole head is injured,
    your whole heart afflicted.
⁶ From the sole of your foot to the top of your head
    there is no soundness—
only wounds and welts
    and open sores,
not cleansed or bandaged
    or soothed with olive oil.

⁷ Your country is desolate,
    your cities burned with fire;
your fields are being stripped by foreigners
    right before you,
    laid waste as when overthrown by strangers.
⁸ Daughter Zion is left
    like a shelter in a vineyard,
like a hut in a cucumber field,
    like a city under siege.
⁹ Unless the Lord Almighty
    had left us some survivors,
we would have become like Sodom,
    we would have been like Gomorrah.

¹⁰ Hear the word of the Lord,
    you rulers of Sodom;
listen to the instruction of our God,
    you people of Gomorrah!
¹¹ “The multitude of your sacrifices—
    what are they to me?” says the Lord.
“I have more than enough of burnt offerings,
    of rams and the fat of fattened animals;
I have no pleasure
    in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats.
¹² When you come to appear before me,
    who has asked this of you,
    this trampling of my courts?
¹³ Stop bringing meaningless offerings!
    Your incense is detestable to me.
New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations—
    I cannot bear your worthless assemblies.
¹⁴ Your New Moon feasts and your appointed festivals
    I hate with all my being.
They have become a burden to me;
    I am weary of bearing them.
¹⁵ When you spread out your hands in prayer,
    I hide my eyes from you;
even when you offer many prayers,
    I am not listening.

Your hands are full of blood!

¹⁶ Wash and make yourselves clean.
    Take your evil deeds out of my sight;
    stop doing wrong.
¹⁷ Learn to do right; seek justice.
    Defend the oppressed.^[a]
Take up the cause of the fatherless;
    plead the case of the widow.

¹⁸ “Come now, let us settle the matter,”
    says the Lord.
“Though your sins are like scarlet,
    they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red as crimson,
    they shall be like wool.
¹⁹ If you are willing and obedient,
    you will eat the good things of the land;
²⁰ but if you resist and rebel,
    you will be devoured by the sword.”
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

²¹ See how the faithful city
    has become a prostitute!
She once was full of justice;
    righteousness used to dwell in her—
    but now murderers!
²² Your silver has become dross,
    your choice wine is diluted with water.
²³ Your rulers are rebels,
    partners with thieves;
they all love bribes
    and chase after gifts.
They do not defend the cause of the fatherless;
    the widow’s case does not come before them.

²⁴ Therefore the Lord, the Lord Almighty,
    the Mighty One of Israel, declares:
“Ah! I will vent my wrath on my foes
    and avenge myself on my enemies.
²⁵ I will turn my hand against you;^[b]
    I will thoroughly purge away your dross
    and remove all your impurities.
²⁶ I will restore your leaders as in days of old,
    your rulers as at the beginning.
Afterward you will be called
    the City of Righteousness,
    the Faithful City.”

²⁷ Zion will be delivered with justice,
    her penitent ones with righteousness.
²⁸ But rebels and sinners will both be broken,
    and those who forsake the Lord will perish.

²⁹ “You will be ashamed because of the sacred oaks
    in which you have delighted;
you will be disgraced because of the gardens
    that you have chosen.
³⁰ You will be like an oak with fading leaves,
    like a garden without water.
³¹ The mighty man will become tinder
    and his work a spark;
both will burn together,
    with no one to quench the fire.”

Footnotes

1. Isaiah 1:17 Or justice. / Correct the oppressor
2. Isaiah 1:25 That is, against Jerusalem