Isaiah 19:25

[Jonny T]

Hi,

I came across this referenced in a book on the Israel-Palestine issue and was curious to get the perspectives of people more versed in biblical history and theology than I.

the verse in question is as follows:

(link)

Originally Posted by Isaiah 19:20-25

20 It will be a sign and witness to the LORD Almighty in the land of Egypt. When they cry out to the LORD because of their oppressors, he will send them a savior and defender, and he will rescue them. 21 So the LORD will make himself known to the Egyptians, and in that day they will acknowledge the LORD. They will worship with sacrifices and grain offerings; they will make vows to the LORD and keep them. 22 The LORD will strike Egypt with a plague; he will strike them and heal them. They will turn to the LORD, and he will respond to their pleas and heal them.

23 In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria. The Assyrians will go to Egypt and the Egyptians to Assyria. The Egyptians and Assyrians will worship together. 24 In that day Israel will be the third, along with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing on the earth. 25 The LORD Almighty will bless them, saying, "Blessed be Egypt my people, Assyria my handiwork, and Israel my inheritance."

this seems to me to be quite a significant shift, by identifying a specific "special relationship" between God and other nations and by listing Israel as one among many.

so I'm curious - what's the deal?

[callee]

Well, I'm in new testament, not hebrew bible, so I'm as far as you can get from an isaiah scholar, but I'll take a stab.

the first 39 chapters of isaiah, known these days as "first isaiah" were composed by one dude circa the jewish defeat & exile. Isaiah was written to accomplish a few goals. first was to offer an etiology, an explanation, for their defeat and exile, which is, ofcourse, because they had sinned and been unfaithful to God. Next is to assert God's sovereignty; to rebut those who would say "God must not be in control, or else how could this have happened?" Part of this rebuttal involves putting down all the surrounding nations that seem to have their own power. About them, Isaiah essentially says "they may look powerful now, but in truth they suck even more than we do, and they'll get their's too someday just you wait, so don't trust in their power either, only trust in God's power." This results in several oracles against foreign nations; predictions of their destruction. Finally, Isaiah wants to predict a future restoration: things suck now, but God will fix it all in the end. All in all, it's a comforting theological message.

Isaiah 19 fits into that "oracles against foreign nations" part. The whole chapter is primarily a prediction of Egypt's destruction (i.e. the coming invasion of the assyrians.) This destruction, Isaiah explains, will not just be a random war of one nation fighting another, but rather will be God using assyria (despite themselves) to punish Egypt for its sin, just as God had used foreign armies to punish Israel for its. The bulk of the chapter is concerned with describing this, how the wisdom of the egyptian wisemen will fail, and so on. It's only in the last few verses of the chapter, the verses you quote, that we get this sudden shift to the positive, and this is simply Isaiah's characteristic prophecy of future restoration. Just as God would restore Israel, if Egypt learned from its punishment and turned to God as well it too would be restored, and God would establish a zone of peace amongst all those nations that faithfully worshiped him.

So I'm not sure that Isaiah intended to communicate some fundamental shift in the relationship between God and his chosen people, Israel. Rather I think he was just using the traditional language to say that if they turned to God Egypt too could be brought into God's kingdom. These types of extension motifs are popular in Isaiah, and is one of the reasons that Christians quote and turn to Isaiah to give voice to the Christian gospel more than any other old testament book.

There, that's all I got for you.

[CSGirl]

*appluads* Very nice answer, callee.

I'm no expert either, but I took a class on the Old Testament prophets (part 1) last semester, and that's pretty much how my professor described it. (We spent a while on Isaiah, and part of that on the oracles against foreign nations) . I know the prof well enough I could probably ask him the question directly, Jonny T, if you wanted a *real* Isaiah scholar's answer.

[Silas Sparkhammer]

This actually got a very blasphemous comic book treatment yesterday, in the latest "Doc Frankenstein." A fairy-sprite is re-telling the Old Testament from a -- ahem -- remarkably different point of view. In one scene, three Babylonian deities (I confess I didn't recognize them, but one was the winged bull with a man's face) are stomping all over Jerusalem, while Yahweh is sulking and looking the other way, muttering about how this'll serve the f----ers right.

Hm... Maybe the characterization isn't all that much different from Isaiah's...

Silas