GOD ARRIVES: BE AFRAID
Opening Prayer
Thank you, Loving Father, that when I read your Word, I will always find reason to rejoice, reason to hope, and reason to trust as I follow you in faith.
Read ISAIAH 29
For additional translations of the passage, use this link to Bible Gateway.
Woe to David’s City
29 Woe to you, Ariel, Ariel,
the city where David settled!
Add year to year
and let your cycle of festivals go on.
2 Yet I will besiege Ariel;
she will mourn and lament,
she will be to me like an altar hearth.[a]
3 I will encamp against you on all sides;
I will encircle you with towers
and set up my siege works against you.
4 Brought low, you will speak from the ground;
your speech will mumble out of the dust.
Your voice will come ghostlike from the earth;
out of the dust your speech will whisper.
5 But your many enemies will become like fine dust,
the ruthless hordes like blown chaff.
Suddenly, in an instant,
6 the Lord Almighty will come
with thunder and earthquake and great noise,
with windstorm and tempest and flames of a devouring fire.
7 Then the hordes of all the nations that fight against Ariel,
that attack her and her fortress and besiege her,
will be as it is with a dream,
with a vision in the night—
8 as when a hungry person dreams of eating,
but awakens hungry still;
as when a thirsty person dreams of drinking,
but awakens faint and thirsty still.
So will it be with the hordes of all the nations
that fight against Mount Zion.
9 Be stunned and amazed,
blind yourselves and be sightless;
be drunk, but not from wine,
stagger, but not from beer.
10 The Lord has brought over you a deep sleep:
He has sealed your eyes (the prophets);
he has covered your heads (the seers).
11 For you this whole vision is nothing but words sealed in a scroll. And if you give the scroll to someone who can read, and say, “Read this, please,” they will answer, “I can’t; it is sealed.” 12 Or if you give the scroll to someone who cannot read, and say, “Read this, please,” they will answer, “I don’t know how to read.”
13 The Lord says:
“These people come near to me with their mouth
and honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
Their worship of me
is based on merely human rules they have been taught.[b]
14 Therefore once more I will astound these people
with wonder upon wonder;
the wisdom of the wise will perish,
the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish.”
15 Woe to those who go to great depths
to hide their plans from the Lord,
who do their work in darkness and think,
“Who sees us? Who will know?”
16 You turn things upside down,
as if the potter were thought to be like the clay!
Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it,
“You did not make me”?
Can the pot say to the potter,
“You know nothing”?
17 In a very short time, will not Lebanon be turned into a fertile field
and the fertile field seem like a forest?
18 In that day the deaf will hear the words of the scroll,
and out of gloom and darkness
the eyes of the blind will see.
19 Once more the humble will rejoice in the Lord;
the needy will rejoice in the Holy One of Israel.
20 The ruthless will vanish,
the mockers will disappear,
and all who have an eye for evil will be cut down—
21 those who with a word make someone out to be guilty,
who ensnare the defender in court
and with false testimony deprive the innocent of justice.
22 Therefore this is what the Lord, who redeemed Abraham, says to the descendants of Jacob:
“No longer will Jacob be ashamed;
no longer will their faces grow pale.
23 When they see among them their children,
the work of my hands,
they will keep my name holy;
they will acknowledge the holiness of the Holy One of Jacob,
and will stand in awe of the God of Israel.
24 Those who are wayward in spirit will gain understanding;
those who complain will accept instruction.”
Footnotes
- Isaiah 29:2 The Hebrew for altar hearth sounds like the Hebrew for Ariel.
- Isaiah 29:13 Hebrew; Septuagint They worship me in vain; / their teachings are merely human rules
New International Version (NIV)Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Reflect
What does the word ‘woe’ mean to you?Jerusalem (with the code name here of Ariel) was intended as the spiritual heart of the kingdom. Now, grimly, Isaiah is letting us know that God had decided to burn up Jerusalem so that nothing would be left except—as it were—ashes on a hearth. As in much of Isaiah, the chapter predicts two waves of catastrophe sweeping over Israel. The more superficial assault would come from worldly enemies: Assyria, Babylon, and so on. Bad enough, but the second and more dreadful attack would come from God himself, as he turned almighty wrath upon his faithless people. How would our own nations measure up? Confronted with existential disaster, the Israelites appeared as neither terrified nor repentant nor fighting for their lives. Rather they seemed, in verses 9–12, to be vaguely addled. The books of Samuel and Kings recount how God’s people slowly lost their ability to comprehend God’s Word, even as their worldly kingdom declined and then fell.
Today’s passage ends on a note of ultimate hope. We may allow ourselves an ironic smile as, in verse 17, the Scripture offers us a God’s-eye perspective, referring to ‘a very short time.’ It is likely that verses 17 to 24 describe the very end of time! The promise was no less true and no less wonderful for all that.
Apply
In what ways can God’s promises for the future impact your day-to-day life?
Closing prayer
Lord God, I pray for the community in which I live, that it will be protected from the diverse catastrophes that can befall even lovely places.
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