Isaiah 21:1-10 | Matthew 8:5-13
Reading through Isaiah during Advent: Isaiah 21-24
Isaiah is fully of dramatic images and descriptions. It is a prophetic book, after all.
There’s a lot of background behind Isaiah using Babylon as an image of all that’s against God’s people. The promise here in Isaiah 21 that Babylon will fall is one of hope. Israel had befallen captivity and exile by and in Babylon. Who they were as a people and the land they had lived in was stripped away from them while in exile. Isaiah speaks within the situation, calling out the despair of Babylon, but also the sinfulness of God’s people.1
So we can understand how over the years, the book of the Isaiah has become an inspiration to all sorts of people and people groups in their situations of extreme difficulty, such as African-Americans within slavery or the quest for civil justice.
Jesus, as a fulfillment of all the prophets, came as the messianic (read: king) leader to usher God’s people out of any kind of individual or corporate captivity into the hope of God’s righteousness and justice. Even so, Jesus deals with Babylonian-type" type captors differently. The Babylon of Jesus’ time was the Roman Empire. Jesus offered friendship and healing even to Roman captors - centurions, leaders, and even those Roman soldiers who nailed him to the cross.
Regardless, whether it’s Isaiah or Jesus, the end is the hope of justice for people. But it requires repentance - the changing of ways. This will continue to be a strong theme in both Isaiah and the gospels. It is also the way of Advent. If Advent leads us to the feast of Christmas, it does in part (like Lent→Easter) through the preparation of our lives, including weeding out that which is not righteousness.
Isaiah 21:1-10
An oracle about the wilderness near the sea.
Like whirlwinds sweeping through the arid southern plain,
it comes from the desert, from a fearsome land.
A harsh vision was proclaimed to me:
The betrayer betrays, and the destroyer destroys.
Go up, Elam! Lay siege, Media!
Put an end to all her groaning.
Therefore, I’m shaken to my core in anguish.
Pains have seized me like the pains of a woman in labor.
I’m too bent over to hear,
too dismayed to see.
My heart pounds; convulsions overpower me.
He has turned my evening of pleasure into dread—
setting the table, spreading the cloth, eating, drinking.
“Arise, captains!
Polish the shields.”
The Lord said this to me:
“Go, post a lookout to report what he sees.
When he sees chariots, pairs of horsemen,
donkey riders, camel riders,
he should listen carefully,
carefully, very carefully.”
Then the seer called out:
“Upon a watchtower, Lord,
I’m standing all day;
and upon my observation post
I’m stationed throughout the night.
Here they come:
charioteers, pairs of horsemen!”
One spoke up and said,
“Fallen, fallen is Babylon,
and all the images of her gods
are shattered on the ground!”
Oh, my downtrodden people, threshed on my threshing floor,
what I heard from the Lord of heavenly forces,
the God of Israel, I reported to you.
Matthew 8:5-13
When Jesus went to Capernaum, a centurion approached, pleading with him, “Lord, my servant is flat on his back at home, paralyzed, and his suffering is awful.”
Jesus responded, “I’ll come and heal him.”
But the centurion replied, “Lord, I don’t deserve to have you come under my roof. Just say the word and my servant will be healed. I’m a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes. I say to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and the servant does it.”
When Jesus heard this, he was impressed and said to the people following him, “I say to you with all seriousness that even in Israel I haven’t found faith like this. I say to you that there are many who will come from east and west and sit down to eat with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the children of the kingdom will be thrown outside into the darkness. People there will be weeping and grinding their teeth.” Jesus said to the centurion, “Go; it will be done for you just as you have believed.” And his servant was healed that very moment.
Prayer
God,
Search my heart. Rather, help me to do so.
I kinda like Christmas. I enjoy the feast, the celebration. But I know that the feast is all the better with a clear heart. Help me not simply to hide difficulty in food and festivity. But help me as I try to arrange my life according to your justice. Make me a good steward of time, of money, of people, of resources, including my own life.
By your spirit and in Christ,
Amen.
There is much more to the history of Israel within what’s going on in the book of Isaiah. Jesus Daily will cover portions in these weeks, but for a short, comprehensive overview, check out The Bible Project’s video on Isaiah.