Who speaks up to power today - with authority?
When politicians are corrupt and those in charge fail to take care of the people - where does our safety and security reside?
In his rage against the smug and power drunk royal rulers and the rich elites, Isaiah raises his eyes to the sky and calls upon the greater kingdom — his is the call for a stronger power than the human, for the ultimate reality that will subdue even his cousin, the king, and humble the city, so that injustice will be dealt with, once and for all. Like so many before him, and during his lifetime, and like the famous prophet who will walk in Jerusalem eight centuries later and be crucified for talking truth to power — Isaiah will prefer the kingdom of heaven over any kingdom on earth.
For so many of us today, for whom this notion is not a comfort but a zealous terror - how can we read this prophet’s passion as a link to deeper and higher connection to what matters most and gives us any kind of comfort and hope?
In this chapter, which is quite short, the prophet, who is still quite young, continues where he left off in chapter 3, pointing his finger at the haughty women of Jerusalem. Their excess, opulence and avoidance of social justice for the less fortunate will lead to their downfall. This chapter begins with the terrible image of seven such women, reduced to nothing, trying to convince a single man to give them dignity and shelter. Thus the mighty shall fall, says Isaiah.
It will come down to the basic need for shelter, and for the need to be protected at all costs. The end of days, warns Isaiah, will strip the men and women of Jerusalem from all their goods, and they will rely not just on each other’s kindness but on the charity of the greater good - the God of Israel, discarded, forgotten, hurt and angry, who will return in wrath to level the city - but will do so as a spurned lover.
Even inside the terror, and after the destruction - there will be love.
And here Isaiah is seen for what he must been in those days - not just a poetic madman calling on the street-corners for repentance, justice and change - but a scholar, trying to make sense of the present, predicts or even fix the future - while decoding the past. He does so by interpreting the sacred traditions that have come down to him - whoever early version of the Torah of Moses that he had access to - before the Torah scroll would become an actual known object - several generations after him.
In Isaiah: Prophet of Righteousness, by Yoel Bin Nun and Benny Lau, the authors write:
“Isaiah was a man of the study house. His methodological approach was to read the words of the Torah with careful attention, forming prophecies that commented and expounded upon the Torah - preceding rabbinic midrash by a thousand years. His prophecies ring with echoes of lyrical poetry and wisdom literature. He sensed that trouble was stirring. His prophetic seismograph detected a pending earthquake. But no one noticed, and no one cared.”
In today’s chapter he laments the present, imagines a furious future in which Jerusalem is humbled by war, past its glory days. It will be the divine hand that will drive reality - not the arrogant kings from the line of David. He reads the future by making references to history - bringing in the biblical metaphors of the Exodus - a cloud of smoke will billow over Mount Zion during the day, and at night there will be pillars of fire, the clouds will spread over Jerusalem - an ancient form of total shelter for the homeless of Judah:
וְסֻכָּ֛ה תִּֽהְיֶ֥ה לְצֵל־יוֹמָ֖ם מֵחֹ֑רֶב וּלְמַחְסֶה֙ וּלְמִסְתּ֔וֹר מִזֶּ֖רֶם וּמִמָּטָֽר׃
“The cloud shall serve as a Succah - a simple hut for shade from heat by day and as a shelter for protection against drenching rain.”
Isaiah 4:5
On that day - when YHWH will restore divine presence to the humiliated city following its defeat, Isaiah imagines, the clouds of glory will reappear: A gesture of love for the survivors, a humble new beginning, a temporary temple, not made of marble and gold.
His reference to the biblical myth tells us something about what 8th century BCE people already were telling about that Exodus epic - and how people like Isaiah were the ones to spin this saga and help co-create the myth of what redemption may look like. One thousand years after Isaiah, and a century after Jesus, another prophetic scholar, Rabbi Akiva, living in Jerusalem under Roman rule and predicating, again, the city’s future demise, quotes Isaiah’s vision of the clouds and shelter.
Like Isaiah, Akiva reads the texts in from of him to tell the future from the past. The Torah in the Book of Wilderness describes the journey of the Hebrews through the wilderness towards the promised land, including one stop in a place called Succot - the huts. Rabbi Akiva comments in the Mechilta, a Midrashic text:
“Sukkot is not the name of a place on earth- those are the clouds of glory, sent to give them shelter, just like Isaiah said ‘Over the entire city of Zion, God will create a cloud.. a canopy will stretch over the glory.’(Isa. 4:5) This already happened in the past for the Hebrews in the wilderness, and it will also happen in the future - just like Isaiah said.”
In his despair, Akiva, like Isaiah, looks beyond polluted politics and the cruel Roman empire to aspire for a higher power - the sovereign of sovereigns, the real reality worth believing in and waiting for. And while so many of us today are not so keen on that kind of faith, no matter how disillusioned we are with the political system, who among us had not hoped for some kind of reset that will repair the system and shelter our global society, whether we deserve it or not, with something like a another chance? When Isaiah imagines a Succah over Jerusalem he imagines the possibility of something better, of love that is the aftermath of hate. The Succah will become a Jewish holiday that comes each year after the Day of Atonement as a symbol of protection and plenty, impermanence and renewal. This symbolic structure was already familiar to Isaiah, and he includes one more reference to this annual season of second chances and forgiveness in this chapter - a reference that has become a building block of Jewish liturgy and theology. When the day of wrath shall come, says Isaiah - some will survive. And the survivors are the ones “who will be inscribed for life in Jerusalem— they will be called holy.’ (Isa 4:3)
And here we have the earliest mention of the idea that will become big in the Jewish New Year liturgy - being inscribed in the Book of Life. Who will live and who will die? What will be written and who among us will live to see another year, and how?
For Isaiah, the only way to get beyond the banality of the present is to look above, to the sheltering clouds, and to look within, to where the divine voice keeps calling. Fate is not in the hands of kings or doctor — there is a greater roof of promise that one day, perhaps, will give shelter to the people even when they, we, forget to learn from the past, to listen to prophets, and to look up, with awe, at every fleeting cloud.
Are you in NYC? Join me in Brooklyn on the night of revelation, go below the Bible Belt to seek hope and make sense of this complex political moment in Israel and beyond. This is the Jewish Game of Thrones. I’m excited.
Born Divided. Israel Vs. Judah: Then, Now, Next?
Rabbi Amichai teaching at Shavuot Across Brooklyn. Four sessions, 10:15pm-2:15am.
5/25/2023
Congregation Beth Elohim
274 Garfield Place, Brooklyn, NY
FREE
https://cbebk.org/shavuot/
Below the Bible Belt: 929 chapters, 42 months, daily reflections.
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I hope to attend for some of this discussion