Isaiah 60:19-20 is a Celtic knot of a text. The obvious structure is a parallelism:\ A. No longer sun for light B. Nor moon for brightness C. Yahweh will be everlasting light D. Your God for your beauty A’. Your sun will not set any more B’. Nor will the moon wane C’. For Yahweh will be everlasting light D’. And your mourning will be completed (shelem) Over top of this parallelism are several chiastic whirls: (more…) Read more
Isaiah 60 forms a distinct unit, with a generally chiastic structure: A. Light has come and the glory of Yahweh, vv 1-3 B. Caravans of kings will be treasures to Zion, vv 4-9 (including gold and silver, vv 6, 9) C.Foreigners build walls and gates open, v 10-11a D.Kings will serve you, vv 11b-14 E. From forsaken to pride and joy, v 15 D’. Zion nursed by kings, v 16 B’. Treasures for base materials, v 17 (including gold and... Read more
Yahweh promises to upgrade Israel: In place of their bronze, iron, wood, and stones He will give gold, silver, bronze, and iron (Isaiah 60:17). It’s a myth of decline in reverse, with the golden age following rather than preceding the bronze (see Deep Comedy: Trinity, Tragedy, & Hope In Western Literature). Isaiah is talking about temple-building: Gentile kings will bring their treasures and flocks to rebuild, adorn, and maintain Zion (vv. 6-9, 13). Fittingly, these four metals are the ones... Read more
Christopher R. Smith’s After Chapters & Versesis a systematic critique of the current format of the Bible, its division into chapters and verses, its book divisions, and its ordering of books within the canon. He wants to erase the chapter and verse markings, and put the books into a different order. Current chapter and verse divisions obscure meaning because they often break up the units on which meaning relies. It doesn’t take a Bible reader long to realize that the... Read more
Using an unusual transsexual image, Isaiah promises that Israel will “suck the milk of nations and suck the breast of kings” (Isaiah 60:16). Gentile kings will take the place of Moses, the “nursing father” of Israel (cf. Numbers 11:12). And not just Moses: Most of the references to milk in the Old Testament come in the phrase “a land flowing with milk and honey.” Once the land provided the milk, but in future Israel will receive her milk not from... Read more
When Israel’s light shines, kings will flock to Zion to “serve” (sharat) Israel. The word typically describes priestly ministry. In the Pentateuch “stand to serve” is a thumbnail description of priestly ministry (Numbers 16:9; Deuteronomy 10:8; 17:12; 18:5, 7), and sharat also describes priestly ministry in the post-exilic Chronicles (1 Chronicles 15:2; 16:4, 37; etc.).In other contexts, it refers to a personal attendant – Joshua “serves” Moses (Joshua 1:1). Isaiah uses the verb to describe the incorporation of Gentiles into... Read more
Irene Backus began her study of Reformation Readings of the Apocalypse: Geneva, Zurich, and Wittenbergout of frustration that Protestant commentaries on Revelation were widely unavailable. Her book is a straightforward summation of the ways Calvinists and Lutherans read the book. Those in Calvin’s circle were, she concludes, “conservative” in their exegesis, following patristic and medieval readings, but adding some polemics against the Pope. Nicholas Colladon, for instance, believed Revelation “furnished a proof of the speedy demise(or conversion) of the papal... Read more
When Jesus called the disciples to be “fishers of men,” he was riffing on imagery from the prophets. Yahweh fishes for Israel as He gathers exiled Jews from the sea of nations in His nets. Isaiah 60:5 gives an additional angle on the imagery. In the parallel lines at the end of the verse the “abundance of the sea” is compared to the “wealth of nations.” Here fishing is not a return from exile but a pilgrimage of nations to... Read more
Yahweh bares His arm so that the nations can see the “salvation of our God” (Isaiah 52:10; Heb. yeshu’at-elohenu). The genitive seems obviously to refer to the salvation that God brings. After all, what sense would it make to speak of God Himself being saved? But then Isaiah twice writes of the Lord’s arm that brings “salvation to Him” (59:16; Heb. tosha’ lo) and “salvation to Me” (63:5; Heb. tosha’ li). Those phrases are not wholly unambiguous. We might translate... Read more
Zizek (The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic?) consider’s John Caputo’s On Religionto be the “ultimate formulation of Derridean deconstructive messianism” (256). Caputo reveals that deconstruction is a “Jewish science” at war with idols and even, Caputo says, with incarnations “because incarnations are always local occurrences” (quoted in Zizek, 257). Deconstruction maintains the gap between the ineffable Event that simmers within the name or the actual, ensuring that no contingent instantiation is ever identified with the Event. Then Zizek offers... Read more
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