Isaiah 56-66: The New Israel

By George A.F. Knight

"Isaiah provides us with a picture," writes George A. F. Knight, "a pattern of revelation, hewn out of the facts of history." This book serves as a sequel to the author's Servant Theology (the International Theological Commentary volume on Isaiah 40-55) with appropriate attention to significant critical issues.

Emphasizing Israel as "a light to the nations," Knight is concerned throughout with the theological issues of contemporary, international scope. He sees Isaiah as addressed to the social, historical situation not only of its own day but of this day as well, with significance for Jews and Muslims as well as Christians — "a book meant for all who come after."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Release date: May 30, 1985
• ISBN: 9781467468503

Book preview

CHAPTER 56

THE CONTENT OF THE COVENANT

Isaiah 56:1–12

1–2a This third part of the book of Isaiah begins with TI actually putting into the mouth of God a declaration of what God expects of his ‘resurrected’ and forgiven people, as they take up their new life in the ruins of their old city. God’s expectation of them is to be lived out within the context of the social situation that prevailed in the decade 538–530 or so, a period which was very different in quality both from life in old Jerusalem before 586 and from their experience of life in the Babylonian exile.

God’s Word to the returnees is expressed in a compact utterance: ‘Keep justice, and do righteousness’. This had, of course, long since been expressed as God’s Word in the Torah, the Five Books of Moses. But now the basic content of God’s Word is summarized in these terms in face of a wholly new historical situation. The people who were now present with our prophet were evidently unable to grasp the historical fact that God’s ‘salvation’ had now actually come. TI had learned this way of speaking from DI, where it is expressed proleptically at Isa. 43:1. As they gazed around them at the ruins of the former beautiful city of Jerusalem the people could be excused for not understanding the reality of grace. Their task, it seemed, was to show their contemporaries that God’s salvation must be grasped in faith. They were to realize that God had now acted first, whereupon it was their responsibility to work out the significance of what God had done by obeying his word in action.

‘Keep’ (or better, ‘guard’) ‘justice’ is God’s first requirement. In any Hebrew sentence the word or idea most to be emphasised is placed first. The pietists amongst TI’s hearers may well have been disappointed at hearing how the first requirement laid upon the returned community was to learn that membership in the Covenant demanded social responsibility. It had been so before the destruction of Jerusalem, as Amos, for example, had insisted. In continuity therefore with the old, and despite the completely new sociological conditions in which they found themselves, TI shows that this command still comes first as it must always, even today; in that, we too are members of this ‘postresurrection’ community. Later in his address we discover to whom justice is to be given. It is not to be confined to one’s own inner circle of family and friends. It is to be ‘guarded’ and thus valued as God’s will, and is to be extended to all people everywhere. The command here issues from the mouth of God, for God himself is the God of justice, compassionately concerned for the poor and needy, for the desolate and those who mourn.

How greatly the instruction ‘and do righteousness’ is misunderstood, particularly in today’s world. In the popular mind, ‘righteousness’ has come to mean ‘self-righteousness’, or ‘living a good and moral life’, and even being aware and proud of doing so. On the other hand, through the Middle Ages ‘justice’ was the normal Latin translation for the Hebrew word that occurs here (tsedaqah), rendering the idea of righteousness as ‘a man’s proper conduct over against an absolute ethical norm’ (G. von Rad, Old Testament Theology, 1:370–71).

The whole long book of Isaiah, covering as it does a period of more than two hundred years of the history of God’s saving love, makes use of two forms of the word for ‘righteous’. These are the masculine form tsedeq and the feminine form tsedaqah. It is important to note the difference between them. Isaiah of Jerusalem first used tsedeq to describe God’s saving, creative activity, his ‘putting right’ his people Israel, his putting them in a right relationship with himself. This he had done in the early days when he had rescued them from the power of Pharaoh and thereafter offered them, through the laws of the covenant he gave them at Sinai, the means of living continually in a right relationship with himself. Hosea 2:18–20 tells how God planned to take his people back though they had rebelled against him, thus seeing God’s covenant faithfulness as more than just a physical rescue from slavery. It was to be seen in terms of God’s steadfast love and complete forgiveness: ‘I will make for you a covenant.… And I will betroth you to me for ever in righteousness (tsedeq, God’s act of redemption) and in justice (mishpat)’. ‘Justice’ comes first in TI’s declaration; before him Amos had considered it to be basically important. Hosea continues: ‘in steadfast love (hesed, God’s covenantal love that never lets go) and (finally) in mercy (rahamim, a word that speaks of the deep physical love a woman has for the child of her womb, rehem)’. These Hebrew words all describe actions of God.

Returning to Isa. 56:1, we note God’s command to the newly restored people of the Covenant, in the light of what he has now done for them. This command expresses what they in their turn are to do to uphold their side of the Covenant in the new situation. To maintain the Covenant, Israel is to do what God does, that is, they are to ‘do righteousness’. This time, however, the word is not tsedeq, the word that describes God’s action; it is tsedaqah. Two centuries earlier Isaiah had isolated this feminine noun and used it to describe that creative, loving activity between persons that has been inspired and empowered by God’s initial act of tsedeq; and this meaning of the word had continued throughout DI’s collection of oracles into those of TI.

Beginning with this period of the Return, the feminine noun tsedaqah began to move in meaning in two directions. Amongst those who had never experienced God’s tsedeq because they had remained in exile and had perhaps become scattered throughout the Persian Empire (see the book of Esther), tsedaqah came to describe a mere act of benevolence, one good deed in a naughty world. Later still the prophet Mohammed grasped the cognate term in the Arabic language and employed it in the Koran to describe the act of giving alms to the poor. Almsgiving then actually became mandatory in his system and since then has always been one of the pillars of the Islamic faith. But for those who had returned to Zion, and for those in turn who lived there after them, the word tsedaqah described something you do unto others as God has already done unto you. It becomes, first, an act of compassionate love, such as is giving a cup of cold water to a thirsty person. But second, since it is God’s tsedaqah, though done by humans, the word describes any creative activity by which a covenant member can woo a sinner out of his or her folly into commitment to