In Isaiah 55: 10-13, invoking natural elements as patterns or exemplars of divine or human action is typical of wisdom literature, and may be additional evidence here of the influence of that tradition on II Isaiah. I will offer a summary and then provide a more detailed exposition. The prophet declares that those who thirst and have no money in verse 1 will find confirmation of the pledge of refreshment. The refreshment of melting snow and rain for the fruitfulness of the earth becomes metaphor for the fact that the commanding word of the Lord will not return to the Lord empty. The Word will be fruitful in the announcement of the restoration of Israel to the Promised Land and its happening in history. The Word becomes a personification of a messenger that has the purpose of restoring Israel. The speech and act of God merge so that the prophet proclaims the power of the Word to rule. The speech of God is divine action as well. The Word makes history is therefore also act. The Word is not empty but confronts humanity.[1] God does not speak the Word in vain. God has made time for humanity. Therefore, God is patient in granting time and space.[2] Thus, the final words from II Isaiah are an invitation to depart, which we also find in Isaiah 48:20 and 52:11-12. They will leave in joy and return in peace. Their captivity is finished. The ruin of Edom proclaimed in 34:13 will find its reversal. The Word gives life. The restoration of Israel will bring a response from nature. Of course, this is a metaphor. Yet, the theological point is significant in that the restoration of Israel has an impact upon nature. The same God who is the source of life and nature is also the God who guides history. Clearly God is judge in the exile, but also merciful in restoring Israel. God has a called a people to serve the purpose of bearing the Word or command of God among the peoples of the earth. God chose what would become a nation, Israel, out of grace. This grace is the origin of the forgiveness Israel experiences now. The exile, a time of judgment, is past. Forgiveness opens the door for a new possibility in the future.
Isaiah 55: 10-13 form the confirming conclusion of the entire pledge of refreshment for "everyone who thirsts" and those "that have no money" (v. 1). Verse 10 continues a series of "For" clauses that begins in verse 8 and extends through verse 12. The force in each case, as the Hebrew particle ki often indicates, is "Because . . ."[3]10 For (ki), a word that signals the natural relationship between verses 10-13 and the preceding verses, as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, a parallelism is not common, though rain and snow do occur together (Job 37:6; Proverbs 26:1; Wisdom of Solomon 16:22). The metaphor is significant. God sends rain, which inevitably falls to the ground and is absorbed by the soil and nourishes vegetation. Humans in turn harvest the vegetation and transform it into food. Similarly, the word of God is sure to have a series of effects the most important of which are indirect and involve human input. It suggests the life-giving gentleness and unobtrusiveness of the ways of the Lord. The natural phenomenon of snow was not an image with widespread currency in most of Israel's climate. The exception being is the northern mountains, in which context it is not accidental that a fifth of all the references to snow in the Hebrew Bible are found in the book of Job, which some scholars have suggested has a northern provenance. However, the property of snow most commonly referenced in the Hebrew Bible was not its coldness but its whiteness, either in a negative comparison (e.g., denoting leprosy, Exodus 4:6; Numbers 12:10; II Kings 5:27), or in a positive comparison (e.g., having had one's sins purged away, leaving the individual as white as snow, Psalm 51:7 and, significantly, Isaiah 1:18). Here, interestingly, the property of snow the prophet values is neither its temperature nor its color but its humidity. Thus, the rain and snow do not return there (evaporate to heaven) until they have watered the earth. The melting snow, like the rain, is a source of refreshment to the earth that does not evaporate until it has accomplished the life-giving purpose for which the benevolent Yahweh has sent it, for Yahweh is master of natural as well as historical forces. The parallel expression for fructifying the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, is unique to this passage. Far more common is the expression "to be fruitful and multiply," which the Bible can use not only of animals that reproduce but also of plants. The melting snow and rain are giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater. The image of sowing, surprisingly (given Israel's agricultural society), occurs only here in the Hebrew Bible; an image more common in the New Testament (e.g., Luke 8:5; II Corinthians 9:10). Its poetic parallel, "bread to the eater," is an example of an extending or intensifying "And what is more . . .” poetic parallelism, of which the Hebrew Bible abounds.[4] Thus, 11 so shall my word, an expression that denotes the command of Yahweh. It occurs infrequently in the Hebrew Bible (e.g., Numbers 11:23; 27:14; Job 29:22; Isaiah 66:2; and especially in Jeremiah, 1:12; 23:28; 23:29), overshadowed by the much more frequent impersonal form, "word of the LORD." The appearance of the form in Job, coincidentally, also includes reference to liquid refreshment ("and my word dropped upon them like dew"). The Hebrew Bible also uses the expression of human commands or purposes (e.g., Genesis 27:8, 13). This word will be like the melting snow and rain, for as it goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty. Concretization of imagery reaches one of its high-water marks in the Hebrew Bible with this image, which occurs only here. The prophet may borrow the image from military imagery, where the Bible sometimes describes arrows and swords as not returning empty to their wielders (e.g., II Samuel 1:22; Jeremiah 50:9). The emphasis in the current context is on the efficacy of Yahweh's word, which not only announces Israel's imminent restoration but also has the power to bring that restoration to pass. Rather, it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it. The prophet personifies the word of the Lord as his messenger and agent. The dynamic word of the Lord, which created and governed history, is the theme. It is like a messenger that must accomplish its purpose. Isaiah closely ties together word and act. Thus, the word of the Lord is the most meaningful and the most mysterious of words. In this sense, the speech of God is the act of God. This implies the power of the Word to rule. The speech of God is divine action in relation to those to whom God speaks. As a divine action, it is also ruling action. Recognition of the power of the Word of the Lord to rule has the implication that we need to speak of its power, might, effects, and the changes it brings. It makes history, and therefore is also act. The promise of the Word is not an empty pledge that always stands confronting humanity. The Word is the transposing of humanity into a new state of one who has accepted and appropriated the promise. One must say all of this because the Word of God is Jesus Christ. With this Word, the church has something serious to say and the world will take it seriously.[5] The Lord does not speak this Word in vain. The Lord has made time for humanity. Therefore, the Lord is patient in granting time and space.[6] In verses 12-13, the final words of the Lord from II Isaiah, is an invitation to depart. The invitation has other parallels. The prophet invites the people to go out from Babylon and Chaldea with shouts of joy and proclaim to the end of the earth that the Lord has redeemed Jacob (48:20). He encourages them to depart from there for the Lord will go in front of them and will be their rear guard (52:11-12). Verses 12-13 refer to the exodus from Babylonia. He calls on the exiles to leave Babylonia. The promise of the Lord of glorious restoration will be fulfilled, but as the preceding verses imply, the nature of their fulfillment may be indirect and will depend on human response to the invitation from God. The prophet may be responding to the failure of most Judeans to move back to Zion after the Persian king Cyrus allowed them to do so. 12 For you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace. The prophet exemplifies Hebrew poetic parallelism with almost crystalline clarity in the first stich (a/a', b/b', c/c'). The imagery signifies movement in only one direction (not out and back), and describes Israel's imminent release from captivity. Thus, the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. 13 Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress; instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle. Nature applauds the display of saving power by the Lord. The Lord will reverse the ruin of Edom described in 34:13, and life will come forth, for the word of the Lord gives life. The response of nature to Israel's restoration continues an important theme found elsewhere in Isaiah, namely, the close interrelationship between the historical and the natural (e.g., 41:18-19; 51:3). Although the imagery (41:18-19; 51:3) is metaphoric, the underlying reality is quite literal: it relates Israel's historical fortunes to its environmental fortunes, and vice versa. His theology, again under the influence of the wisdom tradition, has its roots in a cosmic creation theology that united historical and supra-historical reality in a single divine plan, at the center of which is Israel, the chosen people of God. While such an idea would seem obvious to any who had experienced the environmental degradation of warfare and other human-instigated catastrophes, in the present context the point is theological: The same God who controls nature controls Israel's past, present, and future, and the reality to which that God calls Israel is a unified whole. Few passages in the Hebrew Bible make the point as eloquently as this one. It shall be to the Lord for a memorial, for an everlasting sign, which may refer to a memorial stone or tablet. Israel, the people the Lord created and restored, that shall not be cut off.
At the heart of Israelite theology is the struggle between the belief in the Lord as a judge who rules by divine law, and the belief in the Lord as a God of compassion and mercy, who routinely violates the demands of divine justice to have mercy on his wayward creation. It is not logical for a God of justice to waive the punishment that Israel justly deserves. No human judge would set aside his own laws in such a cavalier fashion. However, God is God and not a human being, and so can do as God pleases.
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[3] (on which see further B.K. Waltke and M. O'Connor, An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax [Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1990], 640).
[4] (See James L. Kugel, The Idea of Biblical Poetry [New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1981.)
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