“The Lord will guide you continually / and satisfy your needs in parched places / and make your bones strong, / and you shall be like a watered garden, / like a spring of water / whose waters never fail.”
“Yahweh will guide you continually, / And He will satisfy your soul in sun-glaring places; / He shall invigorate your bones, / And you will become like a well-watered garden, / And like a flowing well of water / whose waters are not defaulting.”
Above is the text of Isaiah 58:11. The first comes from the New Revised Standard Version, and the second is the Hebrew as translated by the Concordant Literal Version.
As one might notice, there is a theme of water—fresh, flowing, living water! The sound of a gently bubbling brook comes to us. Or is it a fierce gushing fire hose?
What is the discussion that leads to this consideration of a swiftly flowing current, to this imagining of thirsty ground being quenched and transformed into a lush garden?
The chapter begins with the prophet being told, “Shout out; do not hold back! Lift up your voice like a trumpet!” The people are to receive a message, a word from the Lord. It surely must be an affirmation, an acknowledgment of their worship. But no: “Announce to my people their rebellion, to the house of Jacob their sins.”
How can this be? Because “day after day they seek me and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness” (v. 2). As if! As if!
That makes no sense, the people respond. What is wrong? “Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?” (v. 3). We have been very careful to observe your dictates, O Lord.
The heavenly reply speaks of their fasting as self-serving, oppressive, quarrelsome, and pugnacious. They “strike with a wicked fist” (v. 4). Their fasting, their worship, serves to cover their corruption and violence. Or could it be even worse?
Wayne Boulton, late professor at Hope College in Michigan, spoke of Isaiah as “not saying…that what is actually going on…is something other than worship. On the contrary, the fact that it is worship is what concerns him so deeply.” He says the prophet focuses on “captivity to religion itself.” [Wayne Boulton, “Worship and Ethics: a meditation on Isaiah 58,” Reformed Journal 26:7 (Sep 1976)]
Do we use attendance at services of worship to avoid what we say and sing and pray and hear—especially when it appears to be too much a challenge? I once asked a congregation if worship is ever dangerous. No one said, “yes.” I did hear a “no” or two. I can’t say I blame them.
The Lord isn’t asking for false humility. “Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself?” (v. 5). Are we making sacrifices God never requested but are simply of our own design? Do we ever get upset when said sacrifices fail to elicit the desired response from God? Do we ever follow paths that seem spiritual and holy, but simply are not what God has been calling us to do and to be?
Verses 6 and 7 set it all out. Set free the captive, break the yoke, feed the hungry, tend to the homeless and naked. Actually, depending on the circumstances, that kind of fasting, that kind of worship could actually be dangerous!
But there are the promises, powerful in their beauty, “Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly” (v. 8). “Then you shall call,”—then you shall call—“and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, ‘Here I am’” (v. 9). The people are told if they do the exact opposite from what they’ve been doing, “then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday” (v. 10).
Here comes the great reversal: dry, dusty ground washed with waters never failing, never deceiving. The Hebrew is כׇּזַב, kāzab, a word whose root meaning is “to lie.” The Lord will satisfy with water which does not lie! Those waters will not disappoint.
That truthful elixir of life has a powerful effect: “Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in” (v. 12).
Michael Barram, professor at St. Mary’s College, comments “Having…embodied their vocation to righteousness and justice, they will be known for generations to come as the community that made their unjust streets livable again.” [Michael Barram, “Between Text and Sermon, Isaiah 58:12,” Interpretation 69:4 (Oct 2015), 462.]
I’m reminded of a speech from the movie City Hall, in which Al Pacino plays the mayor of New York during a time of racial tension following the slaying of a little boy during a police shootout. He is addressing the congregation of a predominately black church, while standing behind the coffin of the young child. He speaks of the failure to have a city free from fear. Pacino then refers to little James.
“Could he not empower me to find in myself the strength to have the knowledge to summon up the courage to accomplish this seemingly insurmountable task of making a city livable? Just livable. There was a palace that was a city. It was a palace! It was a palace, and it can be a palace again!”
The restorer of streets to live in. The restoration of a livable city—indeed, a palace. The repairer of the breach. “May there be no breach in the walls, no exile, and no cry of distress in our streets” is the prayer of Psalm 144:14. No breach, no easy entry of the enemy.
Not to be too dismissive, but the chapter ends with reflections on the observation of a holy Sabbath. We won’t deal with that right now. (That in itself deserves a series of reflections!)
The embodiment of justice produces a wellspring not unlike the words of the prophet Amos, who says to “let justice roll down like water and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (5:24). The wellspring yielding waters of justice does not possess the characteristics of kāzab. No, more than that, it acts against—it makes a point of drowning it!
We are poised at the new year. 2023 is yielding to 2024. Where will the waters from that wellspring take us? Will we jump out of the water, saying, “Okay that’s enough. It’s time for me to dry off”?
How about we go along with the Spirit in whom we have been baptized and flow to unexplored regions? Much awaits us.