“What was the word ‘Shoah’ two years before the Shoah happened?
It was a word for a great noise, for something big and bad.”
This fragment of a Hebrew poem by the recently deceased Israeli poet Meir Wieseltier references the Hebrew word that has become the name of the Holocaust that ravaged world Jewry between 1939-1945.
The word’s origin is biblical, and shows up in today’s chapter in Isaiah for the first time. The context is sadly similar to what we think of when we hear this awful word today - a calamity that befalls a nation - in this case, as is in the days of Isaiah - the nation of Israel.
Isaiah looks into the future - the Assyrians are already taking hold of the region, and their zero tolerance policy towards local cultures and religious faiths unlike their own will mean annihilation for the people of Judah just as the people of Israel are already starting to sense during Isaiah’s old age. As he looks ahead the old prophet tries to warn his people, yet again, not to rely on their own military might but find a deeper, stronger source of trust and hope - the god of their ancestors:
וּמַֽה־תַּעֲשׂוּ֙ לְי֣וֹם פְּקֻדָּ֔ה וּלְשׁוֹאָ֖ה מִמֶּרְחָ֣ק תָּב֑וֹא עַל־מִי֙ תָּנ֣וּסוּ לְעֶזְרָ֔ה וְאָ֥נָה תַעַזְב֖וּ כְּבוֹדְכֶֽם׃
What will you do on the day of punishment,
When the calamity comes from afar?
To whom will you flee for help,
And how will you save your carcasses
The word ‘calamity’ that’s used in this translation is the Hebrew word Shoah, with its origins in the Latin calamitatis. Other translators and interpreters, way pre 20th century, render it as ‘darkness’, ‘sudden woe’, or ‘destruction’. The King James translation prefers ‘desolation.’
But what’s really striking in this chapter is not just the foreboding shadow of so many chapters in Jewish History that include such horrors - but the theological attempt Isaiah is making to make sense of this divine wrath.
Assyria, Isaiah says, is not in charge of this scenario. It is all in the hands of YHWH who chooses which nation to use for his own needs, including to punish Israel for excessive denial of YHWH’s presence. In Isaiah’s rich language, Assyria is but the tool, an axe used by God to cut down the trees - but this tool, too, will someday be discarded.
‘Shall the axe take pride in its own action’ asks the prophet -maybe trying to boost the people’s morale with the future fact that those who will soon inflict a Shoah on them will one day, further in the future, be punished for their hubris and pride? That is, perhaps some sort of consolation in the greater scheme of things.
The rise of the Assyrian Superpower is a reality previously unknown to Isaiah or any of the prophets. No more local gods and battles that can be explained in simpler terms. This grand scheme of violence needed a new theology to explain the lack of grace and protection. Isaiah senses the proportions of the loss and his solution is elegant - if imperfect. The God of Israel is using Assyria to push Israel beyond its limits - but it’s just a phase and like all chapters this too shall, eventually, pass.
Similar theological responses were also heard pre, during and post 20th century Holocaust. Did God hide God's face as the gas chambers worked nonstop? Was this a punishment for secularism, zionism or a combination of both? Or, as so many came out of the camps feeling - there is no more God at all?
Isaiah insists on hope - which will arrive in the next chapter, even as the ax has cut down all the trees, and even the mighty cedar of Lebanon are felled. The ax that features in this chapter among other tools that can be used for demolition would echo through history - used not just for its original helpful use - but also for executions and extermination. By the time Neo-Fascism raises its head again in Italy in the 1970’s - it’s the ax that will define their cause.
So how does Isaiah calm the people about the future, which he can’t deny will be full of force? Faith is the key - the long arc of history, the long game; and the utopian fantasy is just around the corner - lion and lamb and all. But will the people ever listen?
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