In Thursday’s post, I raised the question of how we should be reading the Bible. What does it mean to be engaged in biblical theology and/or theological interpretation of scripture? The upshot of my discussion of the history of the discipline was that theological readings of the Bible are only as valuable as their ability to (1) articulate a storied theology that changes and develops; and (2) help us deal with difficult passages.
In this case, the question is: how can theological interpretation help us read, interpret, and apply passages of failed prophecy having to do with Israel’s return from exile?
Of course, to even pose the question in this way indicates that one level of interpretation has already been given: the prophecies indicate x, but history contains y. As much as such a reading might be the product of “historical critical” scholarship, I’d suggest that this was the conclusion, already, of the writers of Isa 40-55 and 56-66.
In the first half of Isaiah, we get hints of several reasons for the exile and hopes for what it might accomplish. Not only is the exile supposed to be punitive (punishing Israel for its injustice, idolatry, etc.), it is also supposed to be atoning and transformative. The hopes of return from exile expressed in the book are not only that the people will return, but that they will be a purified people, now capable of and actually making good on obedience to God and justice toward one another. This is the kind of people that is supposed to be restored with glory, ruling over the nations.
But the return is not so glorious, the nations are not subjected or drawn to Israel, and perhaps most importantly the people are not changed.
I want to suggest that this problem is a driving force behind 2d Isaiah: It is introduced by a wonderful song of consolation, saying that yes, the exile was punitive, and yes, it was even atoning (her penalty is paid, she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins).
But the story isn’t quite resolving as hoped. Yhwh is faithful to the end, but this faithfulness is going to be put on display in the face of the withering, failing covenant faithfulness of people, which is beautiful like a flower today, blown away by the wind tomorrow (Isa 40:6-8).
The story of restoration is rewritten, based on the conviction that YHWH is faithful to his covenant people, and will find a way to enact his faithfulness even when his servant Israel proves itself, even after exile, to be blind and deaf (42:19). Yes, he will restore the blind and deaf (43:8).
The story is rewritten so that the goal of a restored, transformed, and glorified people remains the vision of Israel’s God, though the means for its accomplishment must now be revisited. Will it be through a servant named Cyrus? Or through a suffering servant, perhaps the prophet himself, who will be faithful as Israel was called to be faithful, punished as Israel was punished, make atonement as Israel’s exile was to make atonement–but this time as a faithful one whose punishment will be effective?
The theological ability to rewrite the story in this fashion depends on identifying God as the God of Israel. Many of our contemporary understandings of what scripture are (inerrant, for example) depend on an idea of God that is less tied to the story and therefore cannot acknowledge this transformation. A God whose deity is defined simply in absolute categories of Truth and Unchangingness posits a scripture that absolutely True and therefore whose meaning is Unchanging.
It is, I would suggest, only a story-bound God (a covenantally defined God, if you prefer), the God who is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob who can be put on display as faithful and constant even when his prophets’ visions of the future fail to materialize.
So what does theological interpretation of the failure of return from exile look like? It looks, first, like a willingness to rewrite the story in light of who our theos (G0d) is. In the case of second Isaiah, the covenant keeping God who will bring about that restoration under changed circumstances. In the case of third Isaiah, the God who, if restoration does not bring glory and transformation, will bring glorious transformation to the Zion that’s been restored without glory.
Of course, none of this tells us what it means, yet, to read the failure of exile as Christians. The story continues to be rewritten, so we’ll attend to that next time.
It occurs to me that your thought also offer an explanation of why the compilers stitched together the three Isaiah’s in the order they did. Each one is having to adapt what came before to changing (and disappointing) circumstances.
Terrific post, Daniel… I’m still ‘digesting’
I certainly think they way you’ve expressed the ark of changing expectations across the exile is right. But read as Christian Scripture, which must mean read as a sign of Jesus Christ as the Revelation of God in his covenant faithfulness to Israel, including faithfulness to his promise to bless all nations through the children of Abraham, I don’t see why categories like inerrancy necessarily get in your way. God’s promises to Israel on both sides of the exile and during it are all fulfilled in Christ as he takes up their struggle with God into himself and accomplishes the faithfulness and obedience to God their history was always intending and leading toward, and to which their prophetic literature was always pointing, even if that can only be known on this side of Christ. Of course we see the story taking all kinds of unexpected turns as it unfolds on the horizontal level (I’m reading Levering at the moment), but it seems like we lose way too much in our understanding of God and the mystery of Christ previously hidden in the ages past (Rom 16:25-26) if we don’t understand those turns according to the plan of God and his unchanging plan on the vertical level. The story is thus held together in Christ, the horizontal fully fused to the vertical and the fluctuating story given an unchanging dimension in which Scripture can faithfully be understood as inerrant in its participation and sanctification in Christ. I’m not really getting what you’re worried about regarding theological interpretation of Scripture.