Lenten Reflection 5a: Isaiah 43:16-21

Isaiah 43:16-21
43:16 Thus says the LORD, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters,
43:17 who brings out chariot and horse, army and warrior; they lie down, they cannot rise, they are extinguished, quenched like a wick:
43:18 Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old.
43:19 I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.
43:20 The wild animals will honor me, the jackals and the ostriches; for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people,
43:21 the people whom I formed for myself so that they might declare my praise.

Comment:
The possibility of novelty, of the utterly new, is a consistent theme of emancipatory political thinking, but, before that, it is the concern of an ancient people and a more ancient God. If there were a common thread that could unite all of the failings of biblical people it would be the incapacity to imagine the new, the temptation to settle for what “is” as opposed to being attuned to what “happens” – this is Badiou’s distinction between the order of being and the order of the event.

The “new thing” that is about to happen concerns another repetition: Israel has gone from desert to promised land and now returned to the “desert,” this time in the form of exile. But just as the desert, a place of lack and scarcity became the site of sustaining abundance, the new “desert,” a place of political subservience and religious compromise, is a place which will not remain hidden from divine generosity. Water will cover the dryness of the desert, justice will bisect the sovereignty of empire (Amos 5:24 But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.).