The lectionary offers passages this week, which remind me of an important principle of interpretation: don’t take it at face value. There is no passage from the Gospel according to Luke, this week. However, the Hebrew Scripture passage is quite relevant to the Lenten season, with its vivid imagery of the wilderness journey.
In Isaiah 43, the prophet declares:
“Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old.
I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?”
(Isaiah 43:18-19)
This offers a hopeful vision of the future; an affirmation that life will change. It is clear to the prophet that God wills this change, and therefore it will take place. Change is inevitable, and divinely-authorised. So, get ready for the new thing.
But the warning to interpreters is: don’t take it at face value!
At first glance, this passage is attributed to the prophet Isaiah, who lived in the eighth century before the common era and served as a “court prophet” during the times of abundance in the southern kingdom of Judea. Isaiah 6, the passage describing the call of the prophet, is set in the Jerusalem Temple, and reflects the privileged status of the prophet, as part of the court of King Uzziah, when Judah was flourishing.
However, scholarship maintains that the section of the book of Isaiah where we find this prophecy (Isaiah 40-55) is set some centuries later, in the sixth century before the common era. The words of prophecy are included in the book of Isaiah, but this section comes from a later time, and was uttered by an unknown prophet, perhaps one who had carefully studied the earlier prophecies of the eight century Isaiah.
Don’t take it at face value: this was not, in fact, a prophecy of Isaiah.
This anonymous prophet speaks during the period when the Israelites were in exile in Babylon. That was not a happy time for many of the people of Israel. They yearned to return home. They looked back on the past with longing eyes. They remembered their years in the land where God lived; now they were living amongst Babylonians, strangers, conquerors.
Yet the words of the prophet instruct them to leave behind these memories; to grasp hold of the future that God has for them in the place where they now find themselves:
“Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old.
I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?”
So on face value, this passage is about leaving behind the past, looking only to the future. Yet, if we read this passage carefully, it not just about what lies ahead. There are some things to be said, and reflected upon, in relation to what lies behind, what is in the past.
The prophet asserts that God declares, Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. That sounds like a wholesale dismissal of the past, consigning what has happened to the archives of history.
And yet: the whole enterprise of the prophet, speaking forth the word of God, calling people to be faithful to God’s way, is in fact an enterprise that relies very heavily on the past. One way of understanding the role of the prophet is, in fact, is to see him as the one who reminds the people of “that old time religion”. Throughout the words of the prophets over the centuries—Isaiah and Ezekiel, Amos and Hosea, Elijah and Hulda, Deborah and Miriam—through all of these words, the bedrock is the covenant which God made with the people of Israel.
Each prophet, in pointing to what is happening in the society around them, draws from the traditions of the Israelite people. The covenant—that special relationship between the people of the Lord God—the covenant is the basis upon which they speak forth “the word of the Lord”, critique the sinful practices that are evident within their society, and propose a constructive way forward. “Seek the Lord”, they declare; “he has made known his ways to you, so if you are true to the covenant, you will draw back to God’s ways.”
So there is, actually, no rejection of the past in the words of the prophets; rather, there is a yearning for the people to draw deeply from the wells of past tradition, in order to refresh lives and reshape society in their own time. Looking with hope to the future means understanding with depth the resources and lessons of the past. The covenant needs to be related to, and lived our, within the daily life of the people. The last informs the present and shapes the future.
“Do not remember the former things, Or consider the things of old.
I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?”
That new thing is integrally related to, and deeply informed by, the past. And the anonymous prophet who speaks in the name of Isaiah, to the people of the land who are now without land, the Israelites living in Babylon, speaks to assure the people of the ongoing presence of God in their midst, even in this land of strangers. They will return to their land. They will undertake the journey home.
And like their ancestors before them, travelling out of slavery in Egypt, to the land promised to them by God, they will endure suffering and trials on their journey. Just as the waters parted to enable the Israelites to leave Egypt, so the springs in the wilderness will bubble up to nurture and sustain the people on their journey:
“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you” (Isaiah 43:2)
the prophet declares, speaking the promise from God that the divine presence will ensure a hopeful future for the people. The prophet here draws quite explicitly and directly from the exodus story, when the people move through the miraculously-parted waters, away from slavery, into freedom. That imagery is applied, ironically, to the journey through the wilderness, back to the land.
And then the prophet continues with this vision of what will occur in that hoped-for future:
“Bring forth the people who are blind, yet have eyes,
who are deaf, yet have ears!
Let all the nations gather together, and let the peoples assemble “ (Isaiah 43:8-9)
The return to Israel will be a glorious gathering of all the nations on mount Zion, a healing of those disabled and disfigured, gathering to worship the powerful Lord God of hosts. This is envisaged as a moment of triumph. The language used is thoroughly military; the victory won is reminiscent of the victory won over the powerful Egyptians.
“Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel:
For your sake I will send to Babylon and break down all the bars,
and the shouting of the Chaldeans will be turned to lamentation.
I am the Lord, your Holy One, the Creator of Israel, your King.
Thus says the Lord.” (Isaiah 43:14-15)
So he does, in fact, attend to the things from the past. And what is better, what is more important, from the past, than the story of the Exodus? The story which provided the foundational narrative for the nation of Israel. The story that is the narrative that all good Jews, even to our own time, look back as as identity-forming for the people of the Jews. The Passover, the Exodus, the Land.
“Do not remember the former things,
or consider the things of old.
I am about to do a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?”
(Isaiah 43:18-19)
Don’t take it at face value. The past is not obsolete, irrelevant. There are gems, treasures, from the past. They speak to the present. They shape and inform the future. Our way forward must be understood and interpreted in the light of the past. What was of value, then, remains relevant and valued for us, now.
The new context, the new occasion, the new opportunity, is a moment for reworking, reshaping, refreshing and renewing. That’s the new thing that God is doing. That’s the mission that God is about in the world, the mission in which we are called to participate with joy and with hope.
On the Gospel passage for this week, from John 12, see https://ruralreverend.blogspot.com/2019/04/this-weeks-lectionary-reading-from-john.html
On the Epistle, see https://johntsquires.wordpress.com/2019/04/03/dont-take-it-at-face-value-2/
An Informed Faith 
One thought on “Don’t take it at face value: on former things and new things”