Foolishness

In another place recently I managed to annoy a dapper but blackhearted man, let’s call him Tennessee, sufficiently to incite him to the point of using his not inconsiderable powers of irony upon me. He compared me to an Old Testament prophet in a drawing room—a polite environment where questions of ethics normally are kept deeply buried (not just swept) under the most tasteful of carpets. The Archbishop of Canterbury would understand and approve the analogy, though he might speak instead of a Nigerian at Lambeth Palace.

Whether either the label or the irony was misplaced in my case, I’m in no position to judge. But in the providence of God I stumbled upon this wonderful passage in Barry G. Webb’s commentary on Isaiah. I quote at length:

Through all this Isaiah clung to the truth that had been etched into his consciousness by his call. In the year that king Uzziah died he had seen the King, high and exalted, and the whole earth full of his glory. So when Senaccherib’s men stood at the gates and proclaimed, in the name of ‘the great king, the king of Assyria’, that Jerusalem was utterly at his mercy, then Isaiah knew it was a lie. The truth behind appearances was that the Lord himself was the supreme ruler, and would determine the fate of Assyria and Judah alike. Isaiah lived by the old creed. Ahaz and Hezekiah found it hard to translate into practical politics, the common people gave it only lip-service, and Senaccherib mocked it as madness, but Isaiah charted his course by it.

The meagre biographical details we have indicate how completely Isaiah’s mission dominated and consumed him. Jerusalem, which featured so much in his preaching, was his home city. His ready access to the king suggested that he was high born and moved in the most elite circles. Yet there was nothing effete or fawning about him. His presence was a constant reminder that royal power was not absolute, and privilege entailed heavy responsibility. His tense confrontation with Ahaz in chapter 7, for example, speaks volumes for his courage and unswerving commitment and to his high calling, qualities that were eventually to cost him his life. His wife is called ‘the prophetess’ in 8:3, suggesting that she, too, prophesied. Certainly she did so indirectly, for she bore sons to Isaiah whose symbolic names expressed key aspects of his message. Beyond this, we know nothing of his family life, what solace he drew from it, or what strains it suffered. All we know is that he was not a divided person; his call impacted and shaped his home life as it did every sphere he moved in. We catch a glimpse in 8:16-18 of a small band of disciples gathering around him, with a strong suggestion that it included his sons. That, at least, must have been a tremendous comfort to him and a most fitting reward for his faithfulness.

Barry Webb, The Message of Isaiah (Leicester: IVP, 1996), pp. 24-25

It is a great commentary, and has to be one of the first you go to once you've struggled with Isaiah for a while. And Isaiah, too, was a very great prophet.