Isaiah 43:18-25 (NRSV)
18 Do not remember the former things,
or consider the things of old.
19 I am about to do a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert.
20 The wild animals will honor me,
the jackals and the ostriches;
for I give water in the wilderness,
rivers in the desert,
to give drink to my chosen people,
21 the people whom I formed for myself
so that they might declare my praise.
22 Yet you did not call upon me, O Jacob;
but you have been weary of me, O Israel!
23 You have not brought me your sheep for burnt offerings,
or honored me with your sacrifices.
I have not burdened you with offerings,
or wearied you with frankincense.
24 You have not bought me sweet cane with money,
or satisfied me with the fat of your sacrifices.
But you have burdened me with your sins;
you have wearied me with your iniquities.
25 I, I am He
who blots out your transgressions for my own sake,
and I will not remember your sins.
The theme of Isaiah 43:18-25 is the promise of the return of the Israelite exiles from their captivity in Babylon by the miraculous activity of their God, a return that both harkens back to the pivotal release in Israel’s history — the exodus from Egypt — and orients the Israelites toward the eschatological future of God’s redeeming work and Israel’s future life. The prophet quotes the Lord as being disgusted with the hearers for their shortcomings in the matter of worship and ritual sacrifice. Nonetheless, the Lord will care for them. The promise is that the Lord is always faithful, even when we fall short, whether in worship, in service, or in our lives. He offers assurance that the Lord will never turn from us, even when we turn from the Lord. If we turn from the Lord the consequences may be severe, not by the Lord’s doing, but by our own.
As the oracle continues, the prophet prods his audience with a word from the Lord. 18 Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. They must also forget past disasters. The instruction is unusual; prophets call is Israel to remember — Yahweh’s deliverance of the Hebrews from Egyptian slavery (Exodus 13:3), the Sabbath and its holiness (Exodus 20:8), Yahweh’s commandments (Numbers 15:40), etc. Often, Israel’s failure to remember those things constitutes its departure from the ways of the Lord. Some Bible passages do encourage us to cherish the old. Jeremiah 6:16 says, “Thus says the Lord: Stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies; and walk in it. ...” Other passages urge us to look forward to the new. These concepts of the value of both the old and the new are not mutually exclusive. For example, the Lord God made historic covenant(s) with Israel — the Lord God would be their God, and they would be the people of the Lord God. Israel sometimes fondly remembers and follows the Lord’s covenant(s), but frequently forgets their relationship with the Lord and breaks the covenantal stipulations. Later, in association with repentance, they sometimes seek to renew their ancient covenant with the Lord. For example, the Davidic King Josiah (c. 640-609 B.C.), after hearing from the prophet Huldah, led his people in renewing the Deuteronomic covenant and performing acts of repentance (II Kings 22−23:3). Jeremiah 31:31-34 promises a new covenant, some features of which transcend even the best of the former covenants. The writer of the NT book of Hebrews cites the Jeremiah 31:31-34 passage in 8:8b-11 as part of the writer’s argumentation of 8:6-13. 19 I am about to do a new thing. The real reason for the call not to remember lies not with the past, but with the future. Thus, one of the literary themes running through chapters 41-48 of the book of Isaiah is the contrast between “former things” and “new things” or “latter things” (e.g., 41:22; 42:9; 43:9; 46:9 [where, in contrast to this passage, Israel is told to “remember the former things”]; 48:3, 6 [referring to new things]). The prophet is warning his hearers not to romanticize the past, a perennial temptation of all people and groups. This verse finds reflection in II Corinthians 5:17, Romans 8:10, and Revelation 21:4-5. II Isaiah expects the consummation of history. This future event will show that the God of Israel is the God of all peoples. Attention turns away from the past saving deeds of the Lord in the exodus and the conquest to the future of a new and definitive event of salvation and a related universalizing of the understanding of God in monotheism. The prophetic turn toward the eschatological future of world history remains the presupposition of Christian monotheism and its missionary proclamation. What happens is that the prophet here no longer views the self-demonstration of Yahweh by the exodus as the sole and ultimate self-revelation of the Lord. The ultimate acts of the deity of Yahweh are eschatological. Here, we find that Israel is not to remember or regard the past, for God is doing a new thing.[1] II Isaiah speaks of the creative power of the Lord in using the concept of divine creating for the bringing forth of what is historically new, whether the event be good or bad. Even when the author speaks of the Lord creating Jacob or Israel, we are to think of the act of the Lord in historical election. The new things that take place in nature he also regards as creative acts of the Lord.[2]
There will be miracles
After the last war is won.
Science and poetry rule in the new world to come.
Prophets and angels
Gave us the power to see.
What an amazing future there will be.
And in the evening,
After the fire and the light,
One thing is certain: nothing can hold back the night.
Time is relentless,
And as the past disappears,
We’re on the verge of all things new.[3]
It may well be that the Lord is instructing the Jewish people here that a generous approach to the future is in giving our all to the present.[4] The future arises out of the same stuff as the present.[5] If so, the past is the beginning of a beginning. All that is and has been is the twilight of the dawn. Everything the human has every accomplished is only a dream before the awakening of humanity to its fullness.[6] In this case, the prophet re-enacts the passage of Israel through the desert. The prophet presents the oracle in classic Hebrew poetic parallelism, but the richness of the imagery sometimes takes priority over strict parallelism.[7] Thus, now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. Rivers were not, in ancient Israel’s literature, symbols of travel, transportation or movement, probably because Israel has so few navigable rivers (unlike Egypt’s Nile and Mesopotamia’s Tigris and Euphrates). Israel’s most prominent river, the Jordan, is barely more than a shallow stream at points (ranging from two to 10 feet deep) and rarely exceeds more than a hundred feet wide. This diminutive size, as well as its tortuous route from the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea, made the Jordan unfit for both navigation and irrigation. It did form, however, a natural border, and that became its lasting biblical significance. (Of the 180 references to the Jordan in the Hebrew Bible, well over half occur in the context of its crossing by the Israelites into the Promised Land or its function as a boundary for various tribes.) Therefore, the poet’s use of the word “rivers” loosens its connection to its poetic parallel “way,” and moves the imagery in a different direction, the direction of refreshment. 20 The wild animals will honor me, the jackals and the ostriches; for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people. The poet is echoing the Exodus/wilderness tradition of God providing water in the wilderness by shifting the emphasis from movement (“way”) to providential care, thereby keeping the focus of the oracle on the divine and miraculous rather than on the human. The prophet pointedly elaborates Israel’s status as the chosen people. Modern scholars who have suggested that the concept of “Israel” is to an unknown extent a theological construct of the biblical writers are echoing an idea already expressed by the sixth-century poet of Second Isaiah. God’s people were not of natural generation, but of deliberate divine formation. Israel, as God’s chosen people, simply did not appear; it formed itself out of disparate elements, against the odds, for a divinely ordained purpose, and Israel as God’s chosen people could not simply be identified as coterminous with the historical geopolitical entities that self-identified as Israel, Jacob, Ephraim, Judah, etc. This theological dictum, which runs throughout the Hebrew Bible, was in constant tension with the perennial temptation on Israel’s part to take its chosen status for granted or as deserved. The biblical writers, from the earliest to the latest periods and including the author of our passage, consistently denounced this form of religious smugness. Further, the Lord reminds 21 the people whom I formed (yatsar) for myself so that they might declare my praise. The Lord nourishes the people so that they can declare in their words and deed their praise of the Lord. The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard said that in worship, the true audience is God. Members of the congregation are the performers. Worship leaders are the prompters. Together, members and leaders declare God’s praise. This approach has been a real breakthrough for people who have discovered that true worship has its basis in what they can offer God, not on what they can get from the service. The past is useful only by way of contrast with what the future holds for Israel by virtue of God’s intervention. In II Isaiah, belief in creation becomes an argument for the expectation of a new saving action on the part of the Lord that will demonstrate afresh the divine power over the course of history.[8] Israel’s God will make a way in the desert by which Israel may escape its current oppression. However, immediately, the imagery begins to change, and the familiar becomes novel. Not only will rivers appear in the desert to provide drink for God’s people, but the wild animals — “the jackals and the ostriches” — will become part of the creation that honors God. Israel’s first deliverance, from Egyptian captivity, was a pivotal experience; Israel’s second deliverance, from Babylonian captivity, is an even greater experience. Whereas the former displayed the power of the Lord through the forces of nature — splitting the Red Sea, bringing water from rocks — in this latter deliverance, nature itself, represented by “The wild animals . . . the jackals and the ostriches” will join Israel in the praise for its deliverance.
The theme that all of us have a wilderness period in our lives has been a strong one. If you are going through your wilderness, it will have at least three things in common with all other wilderness experiences. You did not choose it. You would not purposely choose to be there. You are not in control. Your anxiety lets you know how little in control you are. Yet, what is missing, amid the noise or quiet, is the voice of the Lord. That voice tells you it will be all right, that you are not alone, and that even the wilderness has its purpose. If we could that voice, it might not feel quite so much like a wilderness. Yet, the silence defines the wilderness experience. The hardest thing for many persons to believe is that the Lord has anything to do with the wilderness. It can feel as if the Lord has vanished, turning you over to the enemy.[9] Indeed, the Lord makes a strange promise. The Lord does not remove the wilderness. The Lord does not tame the wild animals. The Lord does make a way through the wilderness. The Lord will provide water for rest and nourishment. Yes, even the wild animals will see the new thing and honor the Lord. When you come to the spring, the water pours forth. You will never see all the water, for it remains hidden in the earth. You will always be in the position of beginning to see the water. In an analogous way, fixing your gaze upon the infinite beauty of the Lord, you constantly discover the Lord in a new way. What you discover will always be something new and strange in comparison with what you have previously understood.[10] We need to look at things familiar until they look unfamiliar again.[11]
It is important to dream big and think small. I certainly do not want to suggest that big is not important. Thus, the important things, like the political and economic order in which we live, remain important. The Lord is at work there as well. Yet, the Lord will make a way through the wilderness and provide something as small as water for the journey. As important as grandiose things truly are, the future is in “small,” not “big.” I simply mean that it may well be that something barely visible today may well shape the future in large ways. A well-known saying is that the Lord is so big that the Lord can be small, even to live in our hearts. The Lord is so big the Lord can be as small as the Lord needs to be. One of the many beautiful elements of this passage is that the Lord reaffirms a commitment to work through small rather than big. Small is significant. The Lord prefers to work through small. The Lord called Abraham. The Lord observed the misery of the descendants of Abraham as slaves in Egypt, so the Lord called one man, Moses. The Lord established a covenant with a small, insignificant Israelite people, through whom the Lord seeks to bring light to the nations. When the Lord became a human being, the Lord made a small entrance through the Jewish girl Mary. Thus, the problem is not that our view of God is too small. Rather, our problem is that our God is not small enough. We sing, “Our God Is an Awesome God,” only because it’s easier to sing than “Our God Is a Smaller-Than-Quantum-Dots God.” When we are beleaguered, bewildered, and befuddled in Babylon, as were the Hebrew children, we, too, receive comfort. Yet, if God were so awesome, then why am I sitting on the banks of the Euphrates and not under the cedars of Lebanon? If my God is an awesome God, then why am I in an oxcart on the way to Baghdad? If my God is an awesome God, then why does my soul seem like a desert?
The Lord seems quite content to use the small and humble to accomplish the work of the Lord in this world. The Lord sends the people of the Lord to influence the world on a micro level, bringing hope to the discouraged, guidance to the lost, comfort to the grieving and assistance to the needy. The mission of the people of the Lord is to welcome strangers, visit prisoners, and bring food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty and clothing to the naked. When we serve others in these simple but significant ways, Jesus promises that we are really serving him (Matthew 25:40). Small is significant in the eyes of God. Small actions are enormously important, especially when we focus them on serving others and seeing Jesus Christ. “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world,” said anthropologist Margaret Mead, “indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
The theme of Isaiah 43:22-25, a segment that extends to verse 28, is ungrateful Israel. 22 Yet, marking the contrast with what precedes, you did not call upon me, O Jacob. The poet turns from Israel’s imminent deliverance to Israel’s persistent sins, characterized here by Israel’s failure to observe the sacrificial cult properly. Here is a call to remember their sinful past. He refers to insincere prayer. Isaiah 1:10-17 expresses what Israel was doing, where the Lord was not paying attention to their sacrifices. Isaiah 28:14-15 refers to Israel as scoffers. Isaiah 30:1-5, 8-17 refers to Israel as rebellious children. Isaiah 31:1-3 says Israel did not seek the Holy One of Israel. Israel has not worked hard at its cultic obligations. Rather, you have been weary of me, O Israel! 23 You have not brought me your sheep for burnt offerings, or honored me with your sacrifices.Some have suggested that, in light of the pre-exilic Deuteronomistic reforms that centralized cultic worship at Jerusalem (see, for example, Deuteronomy 12:13-14), it would have been improper for the exiles to offer sacrifices in Babylon. Thus, the prophet may not level an accusation against a lapsed cult. I have not burdened you with offerings, or wearied you with frankincense. 24 You have not bought me sweet cane with money, or satisfied me with the fat of your sacrifices. A uniqueness of these verses is that while other prophets complain of insincere sacrifices, here the prophet accuses Israel of not offering sacrifices. The Lord has delivered the people from the duty of sacrifice by destroying the temple. The text suggests Israel failed in its cultic obligations in the past and in the present. However, you have burdened me with your sins; you have wearied me with your iniquities. Indeed, whether the Jewish people maintained the cult in exile or not, the poet’s point is that what Israel burdened and wearied its God with were its sins and iniquities. Israel may very well have neglected the external cult while in exile; that was understandable. What was unforgivable was that Israel did not maintain the spiritual righteousness in exile of which the cult was the physical representation. God points out that the disobedience of God's people "burdens" God with our sins and "wearies" God with iniquities. Yet, we now have an exclamation of forgiveness that interrupts the charge just leveled. 25 I, I am He who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins. Many people have the notion that God is mad at them because of what they have done in the past. For the Israelites, such sinfulness would have been unforgivable except for the fact, the prophet announces in the climax of the oracle, that it is Yahweh who blots out Israel’s transgressions, not for Israel’s sake, not for the cult’s sake, but for “my own sake.” The poet concludes the passage with an inclusio with the word “remember,” declaring that just as God bid Israel not to remember former things, so, too, will Israel’s God not remember Israel’s sins. The love of God reaches beyond Israel to all creation. The righteousness and self-identity of the electing God are shown by divine faithfulness not merely to the election of Israel, but to creation. For the same of the name of the Lord, God will not let the elect or creation sink into nothingness.[12]
[1] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 1, 246.
[2] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 2, 41.
[3] —Billy Joel, from the song, “Two thousand years,” from the album, The Complete Albums Collection, released November 8, 2011. billyjoel.com. Retrieved September 19, 2018.
[4] Real generosity towards the future lies in giving all to the present. -Albert Camus
[5] The future is made of the same stuff as the present. = Simone Weil
[6] It is possible to believe that all the past is but the beginning of a beginning, and that all that is and has been is but the twilight of the dawn. It is possible to believe that all the human mind has ever accomplished is but the dream before the awakening. H. G. Wells
[7] for instance, the expected parallel for the A-clause “I will make a way in the wilderness” would be something like “highway in the desert” for the B-clause. However, the poet instead has paralleled “way” with “rivers,” hardly a poetic parallel.
[8] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 2, 12.
[9] --Barbara Brown Taylor, "Four stops in the wilderness," a sermon on the temptations of Jesus in Mark 1:9-15.
[10] --Gregory of Nyssa, cited by Elizabeth Newman, Untamed Hospitality (Brazos, 2007), 58.
[11] G. K. Chesterton
[12] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 1, 445.
[13] Frederick Buechner, The Longing for Home: Recollections and Reflections, San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996, pp. 172-173
[14] Martin Marty, A Cry of Absence: Reflections for the Winter of the Heart, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983, pp. 169-170
[15] Jurgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope, New York: Harper and Row, 1967, p. 24
[16] Daniel L. Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology, Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1991, p. 239
[17] Migliore, Ibid., p. 240
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