The violence of God: Investigations in the book of Isaiah

The book of Isaiah: 66 chapters, 1292 verses. By all accounts, an exceedingly complex piece of literature. A masterpiece in its own right.¹ While scholars have long debated the authorship of the book and its date of composition,² the book has traditionally been associated with Isaiah of Jerusalem whose prophetic activity spanned a period of about 42 years (742–700 B.C.).

I would venture to say that for most Christians the book of Isaiah is probably the best known and most loved prophetic book of the Old Testament. When I was a young believer, Christians eagerly pointed out to me Isaianic passages that prophesied various aspects of the Messiah’s life centuries before Christ even appeared in human history.

That He would be born of a virgin: “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel (7:14).”³ That He would come from the lineage of Jesse (11:10a). That He would heal the blind, the deaf, and the lame (35:5–6). That He would be God (40:3). That He would grow up in humble circumstances (53:2). And that He would be despised and rejected (53:3).

As a young Christian, I was most touched by and drawn to those verses that spoke so vividly of Christ’s sufferings and death for the sins of humanity (52:15; 53:4–7,10; 59:15–16). Isaiah 53:4–7 particularly stood out:

Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed . . . like a lamb that is led to the slaughter . . . he did not open his mouth.

For me, at that time, the message of Isaiah focused on the announcement of a Messiah who would suffer and die to bring about the salvation of humanity. As important as this theme is, that impression began to change when I actually endeavoured to read the book from beginning to end. What I found shocked me! I discovered a book filled with dire warnings, ruthless judgments, and nasty curses.

Isaiah’s call in chapter 6 caught my attention. While I was fascinated by the interaction of God with the great prophet, I could not help being disturbed by this encounter. Here was a man who was called by God, yet invited to take on a mission that was doomed to failure from the beginning. In fact, the net impression the text leaves is that God Himself would ensure that Isaiah would fail:

And he said, “Go and say to this people: ‘Keep listening, but do not comprehend; keep looking, but do not understand.’ Make the mind of this people dull, and stop their ears, and shut their eyes, so that they may not look with their eyes, and listen with their ears, and comprehend with their minds, and turn and be healed” (6:9–10).

How could I reconcile such harshness with my perception of a loving God who allows His own son to suffer and die for us? Beyond the mere fact that here was a God who seemed bent on ensuring the downfall of His people by making sure they don’t understand what’s in store for them, how was I to interpret the violence of the judgments against Israel so often reiterated in the book?

Therefore the anger of the LORD was kindled against his people, and he stretched out his hand against them and struck them; the mountains quaked, and their corpses were like refuse in the streets (5:25).

Through the wrath of the LORD of hosts the land was burned, and the people became like fuel for the fire; no one spared another. They gorged on the right, but still were hungry, and they devoured on the left, but were not satisfied; they devoured the flesh of their own kindred (9:19–20).

While the book of Isaiah contains many promises of salvation, it also exudes a degree of divine violence that is virtually incomprehensible for Christians who have come to view and portray Jesus as the ultimate Prince of Peace.

Is it possible to make sense of the violence of God in the great prophetic message of Isaiah? Are we condemned to pretend it’s not there, like the proverbial elephant in the living room?

My assumption is that there is an organic unity between the Old and the New Testaments, between the covenant God of the Old Testament and the Jesus of the New Covenant. In this series of articles on Isaiah, I will explore this scandalous notion of the violence of God in an attempt to understand how it functions in the context of Isaiah, but also how it can be inserted into the history of salvation as it unfolds in the person of Jesus Christ.

Our investigation will focus particularly on Isaiah 1:10–20, which represents the very essence of Isaiah’s prophetic message and Isaiah 6, which gives us an exceptional insight into the very heart of God and the mission of the prophet.

Continued . . .

1. For those who wish to explore further, I recommend Walter Brueggemann’s 2-volume commentary on Isaiah (John Knox Press, 1998).
2. It would not be quite correct to speak of unanimous assent, but scholars have generally come to attribute chapters 1–39 to the pre-exilic era (“First Isaiah”), chapters 40–55 to the exilic period (“Second Isaiah”), and 56–66 to the post-exilic era (“Third Isaiah”). For a well-reasoned critique of this three-fold hypothesis, I recommend W. S. LaSor, D. A. Hubbard, and F. W. Bush, Old Testament Survey, 2nd ed. (Eerdmans, 1996), pp. 281–288.
3. All biblical references are from the New Revised Standard Version.

Pierre Gilbert is associate professor of Old Testament studies at Canadian Mennonite University/Mennonite Brethren Biblical Seminary in Winnipeg, Man.