Lenten Reflection 3a: Isaiah 55:1-9

Isaiah 55:1-9
55:1 Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.
55:2 Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.
55:3 Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live. I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David.
55:4 See, I made him a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander for the peoples.
55:5 See, you shall call nations that you do not know, and nations that do not know you shall run to you, because of the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, for he has glorified you.
55:6 Seek the LORD while he may be found, call upon him while he is near;
55:7 let the wicked forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts; let them return to the LORD, that he may have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
55:8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD.
55:9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Comment
There is a paradigmatic text, which occurs in various forms, that condenses the whole of divine activity into a single formulation:

"The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, yet by no means clearing the guilty, but visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation." (Exodus 34.6-7)

In a single figure of the divine resides the impulse to mercy and to punishment. The book of Isaiah can be seen as an extended meditation on this tension between retribution and forgiveness. However, in Isaiah it happens in reverse: anger precedes forgiveness – the liturgical formulation, prefers the softer side of God and thus presents it first, warning, nevertheless, that this is not the whole picture. In practice –an intra-textual “practice” – anger comes first, mercy and forgiveness come to substitute for anger. This difference is so apparent in Isaiah that scholars divide the book into two parts: “first Isaiah” where anger and punishment (i.e. exile) takes precedent and “second Isaiah” where mercy reigns. The shift can be seen in the following:

For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with great compassion I will gather you. In overflowing wrath for a moment I hid my face from you, but with everlasting love I will have compassion on you, says the LORD, your Redeemer. This is like the days of Noah to me: Just as I swore that the waters of Noah would never again go over the earth, so I have sworn that I will not be angry with you and will not rebuke you. For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but my steadfast love shall not depart from you, and my covenant of peace shall not be removed, says the LORD, who has compassion on you. (Isa 54.7-9)

Today’s text, well into “second Isaiah,” further articulates the compassion that God longs to show to Israel. What is interesting here is the “materialist” cadence. The promise of a new covenant is bound to a new economy. This is an economy that is not administered by (the Babylonian) empire, not ruled by the market, not driven by scarcity: it is an economy of abundance where, like the divine compassion that manifests in rhetorical excesses, the things of human need become, in there excess, the things of human enjoyment: “eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food”. This is an abundance that destroys, in exceeding, a calculable exchange: “you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.” Under the new covenant, a new regime of enjoyment, an abundance dispensed from a source, itself in excess of the calculable: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” This is the utopian hope offered to a people in exile.