Mtr Taylor Devine
Dear Friend,
When a Daily Office reading makes me go “yikes” I am always grateful if I can take a little time to read some of the context and commentary on it rather than just turning to the next thing. Daily Bread, thankfully, gives me an extra moment to explore some of the texts that at first may alarm me, and on the days when the text is rich and inviting, to spend some extra time pondering the complex mystery of God without quite so much alarm! Today’s reading from the Prophet Isaiah begins:
Thus says the Lord:
Where is your mother’s bill of divorce
with which I put her away?
Yikes! What could the Prophet Isaiah be saying about God? At first glance I am very concerned. Kinship language has power - don’t talk about Mom! The prophecy goes on:
Why did no one answer when I called?
Is my hand shortened, that it cannot redeem?
Or have I no power to deliver?
Upon some close reading - and noting a really quick change from this section to a “Servant Song” - the beginning of Chapter 50 may be saying more about God than Mom, or the symbolic all-Israel notion to which the text seems to be referring. My go-to brief commentary* says “There is no bill of divorce to mark God’s putting away of Israel as irrevocable (Deut. 24:1-4, Jer. 3.1), nor did God have to sell his people to pay off a creditor... Despite Israel’s failure to respond, God still has the power and will to save, just as in the first exodus.” The Prophet Isaiah, using the kind of jarring language a prophet might, draws the hearer’s attention to God’s pursuit of God’s people, and to the pattern of saving work despite humanity’s urge to turn away from God.
Though I don’t mean to rush to a pretty ending of the story, it does help to remember the patterns of God’s saving work as illustrated through the scriptures, tradition, and in Church and life experience. God does not “put away” God’s children, nor does God make trades for their good or ill. God’s sovereignty is illustrated through this text. As a response to this sovereignty we hear the third of the “Servant Songs” in Isaiah (Isa. 42:1-9, 49:1-6, 50:4-9, 52:13-53:12). These poems “suggest both collective and individual identities, evoking situations both past and present, as well as something that goes beyond ordinary historical realities…[they] speak of the historical experience, including suffering, of communities of faith, beginning with Israel in exile. The Servant Songs attest to the theological significance of corporate service and even corporate suffering as a witness, a fact too easily overlooked by those who identify the servant with Jesus.”**
The Servant Song may attest to those within the gathered community who were striving to be faithful and who were experiencing the suffering that comes with going against the grain, as opposed to the group the Prophet is rebuking, reminding them of who God is.
In the time of the Book of Isaiah (500s BCE for this section) and in our own day it seems that God’s people might find it more comfortable to envision a God who works in transactions and blame, this might make more sense to us in our days of shame and difficulty. However the pattern laid out in our Scriptures, tradition, and in our shared life is that our God is the God who doesn’t “put away” God’s people. God is a God who doesn’t sell out or sell off to make a point. God is a God whose identification with suffering, with love, and with restoration begs us to hear “It is the Lord God who helps me.”
In Christ,
Mtr Taylor
*Harper Collins Study Bible, NRSV, 2006, p. 977.
**Opening Israel’s Scriptures, Ellen F. Davis, 2019, p. 275.