I was woken from the stupor of sleep by these familiar and mocking words of Isaiah.
“For it is precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little.” For by people of strange lips and with a foreign tongue the LORD will speak to this people, to whom he has said, “This is rest; give rest to the weary; and this is repose”; yet they would not hear. And the word of the LORD will be to them precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little, that they may go, and fall backward, and be broken, and snared, and taken. – Isaiah 28:10-13
I’ve written about them before, somewhere or other. They are sort of lilting and therefore memorable–precept upon precept, line upon line, here a little there a little. Isaiah has just gotten through describing the drunken stupor of Israel, how she is so debauched that she wakes up in the morning lying in her own vomit. He has painted a disgusting picture of her, her sin, her rejection of God. Then he pulls out this mocking tune, the words she used to make fun of Isaiah’s task. He is preaching and admonishing and rebuking, and she mocks him. It’s just law upon law, she mocks, precept upon precept. What, are you going to go verse by verse through the text? Line upon line? Staggeringly drunk, she can hear only enough to mock.
And so judgement, because God will not be mocked. The judgement will be that people who speak a different language, whom Israel cannot, therefore, understand, will overtake her. God had said to her, over and over and over, This is rest, this kind of living will give you repose, the law, each precept, each word, is life and peace, but she wouldn’t listen. She would not hear, even though she understood the words. So now God is going to use his same law to break her, to cause her to fall backwards. In the next chapter Isaiah is going to describe a stone that she stumbles against.
The hardness of heart that is joined to the inability to hear is a dangerous place to be. But it is also deeply frustrating. From a human stand point, if someone refuses to hear what you’re saying, you’re going to find welling up in your immortal soul a spring of rage. This happens to me both ways with my children. I say something, they don’t listen, I say it again louder, they still don’t listen, I end up shrieking like a lunatic, and then suddenly everybody looks up and wonders why I sound unglued. But very often, they speak to me, and I can hear what they’re saying but I don’t acknowledge them because I don’t have an answer, or I don’t think they need to know that information. So they ask again. And then again. And again. Sometimes it’s a combination of the two. They ask. I answer. They don’t listen to the answer. They ask again. I answer again with anger. They don’t listen. Suddenly everyone is screaming.
And we all speak the same language. It’s not like we’re standing around on the ascending stairs of Babel, suddenly unable to understand each other. But that same hardness of heart plays itself out in the confusion of language even now, even if we are supposedly on the same page.
The solution to not hearing, for God, is more speaking. You’re not listening? Not hearing? Well, the word that you mock is going to be precept upon precept, line upon line for you. God’s solution to human deafness was to send the Word, to come himself with speech so clear, so unavoidable that it could only result in death.
What a great mercy, though! Because these mocking words, meant to belittle and embarrass, God turns around for the one who trusts him, making them way of life. Incrementally, little by little, line upon line, word upon word, concept upon concept, here a little there a little, he uses his own word to open the inward ear, to build trust and understanding, to grow up the believer. You listen more and the words themselves become more understandable. That is a true mark of faith, that line upon line the scripture gives life. And it isn’t a firehose, a sudden, complete knowledge. It is here a little there a little, a gentle and quiet restoration of order, the giving of rest and peace over time as more and more is understood.
That’s where I’ll be this morning, gathering a little here and there, one line at a time.
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