Isaiah’s Promised New Exodus

There is a road to travel.

It's a way of freedom.

It's the Exodus Way.

It's the road out of slavery, the road through the wilderness, and the road into inheritance and blessing.

We've been tracing this theme of the way, and today we look at the prophet Isaiah.

In his time, Israel is living in the promised land, but it's become a land of oppression and slavery because of enemy threats on the outside and idolatry and injustice on the inside.

Yet, Isaiah prophesies of a day when the land will truly be at peace, when there will be a final road in.

And the imagery in Isaiah gets cosmic.

When all humans and all creatures and all life is in a relationship of intimate knowing with Yahweh.

For this promised new creation to come, God himself must make the way.

And so, Isaiah envisions a new road through the wilderness.

So a voice cries out, in the wilderness, y'all should prepare the way of Yahweh.

Y'all make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

The only way this highway is coming is for God to make it and for God to lead the way.

This highway through the wilderness isn't a road we travel on with our feet.

This is a road we travel by changing our hearts.

They're back in the land and there's all kinds of poor Israelites suffering and there won't be a safe passage through the wilderness until you start doing right by your neighbor and dealing with the injustice within Israel.

So, the call to leave Egypt is now a call to repentance.

Today, Tim Mackey and I explore the narrative theme of the Exodus in the scroll of Isaiah, finding all of these story beats: the road out, the road between,

and the road in.

Thanks for joining us.

Here we go.

Hey, Tim.

Hi, John.

Hello.

We continue walking through the theme of the New Exodus.

The New Exodus.

Yes.

This theme, it's a big one.

There's a lot going on.

Yep.

Like all major biblical themes, cover to cover, lots of parts and lots of cycles of repetition through all the parts of the Bible.

The Exodus story proper

is really a big narrative of a lot of ideas, which is the road out of slavery and oppression, then the road between, which is the wilderness journey, and then the road into the promised land.

All of that is the Exodus.

What gets confusing and where there's tension is that that template, that big template, when it starts to get applied to other stories, it's kind of confusing.

What part of the story are we in?

Are we going into the promised land?

But it really feels like we're going back into the wilderness.

So like we ended looking at Judges and

the people of Israel are now likened to Pharaoh who are in the promised land, but now are kind of like under oppression of their own making and they need deliverance.

Yeah.

Like they need a new type of exile out of from themselves.

Yeah.

From the larger scale, they are in the land.

So they're in that third part into the land.

But then once they get in there, they're stuck in these cycles that all are sounding the notes of going out of Egypt.

And that seems to be part of the point.

So maybe

music analogies can serve us here, where you have a piece of music that has a large architecture to it, you know, from

introduction to going through cycles of melody leading up to a kind of resolution.

But then each one of those cycles through the melody could be a creative variation of the whole thing, but on a smaller scale.

And you mix things up and you swap them and invert them, turn majors into minors.

And I don't know,

music theorist.

So isn't this what makes for interesting music?

Yeah.

Is it doesn't just repeat itself in a way that feels predictable.

Well, you're not talking about pop music.

You're talking about.

Oh, that's a good point.

That probably

is what pop music it is.

Yes.

In talking about jazz or classical.

Classical music.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The pop music is very clear-cut.

Yeah.

Tell you where I'm going.

We're going to go there.

And then we're going to have a little fun bridge.

And then we're going to just.

Bring it home in exactly the way you thought it would be.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Exactly.

Yeah.

So the Hebrew Bible is not like that.

The Hebrew Bible is not a pop song.

It's not popular music.

It.

No.

That'd be a good title of a book.

The Bible's Not a Pop Song.

You should run with that.

Okay.

Yeah.

All to say, yes, I'm tracking.

Also, where I'm feeling the tension, I think I'm supposed to feel the tension.

So let's continue on in this tension.

So the first big outworking of the Exodus template on the macro scale, the road out is the Exodus story proper, the Prince of Egypt movie, part of the story, Exodus 1.15.

The road in between is their long sojourn in the wilderness that ends only in the final days of Moses, that he brings them to the edge of the promised land in the Jordan River.

And then Joshua becomes the road in.

And then, once you get to the road in, Judges, like we looked at last time, just says, now we're just replaying the whole thing over and over and over again in the land.

Yeah.

And that goes through all sorts of complicated plot twists, leading to the rise of a monarchy, then the establishment of Jerusalem as the capital city, the building of the temple in that city, and then centuries-long, torturously slow self-destruction of the Israelite family in the land, leading to a couple rounds of imperial oppression.

The rise of a couple new pharaohs.

One is the rise of the first true imperial invasion force that the world had ever seen, the Assyrian Empire.

The first empire.

The first war machine on the largest scale.

any civilization had known.

And they just stormed what we call the Near East.

Just took it all over.

And the Israelite kingdoms were split into two by that time.

By two rival houses, the house of Israel.

Because of Assyria.

Way before that.

Way before that.

Yeah, that's right.

So Israel is a couple years into a split.

A couple years, a couple centuries into a split.

So they're weakened.

by that.

And so when the Assyrian armies come through, it's just a huge shockwave.

So Isaiah of Jerusalem, Isaiah the prophet, lived in that time period of the waves of the Assyrian armies sweeping through.

And he saw and anticipated that the northern kingdom was going to get carried away in the flood of Assyrian armies.

And

he also trusted that God was going to deliver Jerusalem.

in his day.

And he encouraged the kings from the line of David there in Jerusalem to trust that God would do so.

And interestingly, Jerusalem was never taken by Assyria.

Actually, the story at the center of the book of Isaiah is about that.

But he also anticipated that the kings from the line of David would not be faithful in the long run.

And that even if it's after Assyria, that

line and the city would fall eventually.

And the empire he could see responsible for that was just new on the block in that era, Babylon.

And so the book of Isaiah anticipates that Israel would not fall to Assyria, but would fall to Babylon.

And that is in fact what happened.

And so the second half of Isaiah, chapters 40 through 66, are all a voice speaking from on the other side of that Babylonian destruction, promising new hope for the future.

So there's this interesting interplay where Isaiah of Jerusalem lived during the days of the Assyrian invasion and predicted rescue,

but then he anticipated the rise of a Babylonian invasion and predicted defeat, but then hope out the other side.

So that's kind of the macro shape.

Of Isaiah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Is that relatively.

I just realized I talked for a long time about ancient empires and states and kings.

So a lot of people's eyes glaze over at that point.

I'm following, yeah, two kingdoms.

Israel's two kingdoms, the northern kingdom, the southern kingdom.

This has been happening for centuries.

Yes.

And it's the southern kingdom where Jerusalem exists.

It's called Judah and like the kings from the line of, they're all kings from the line of David, right?

Yep, in Jerusalem.

But then the kings in the north,

they're not from the line of David.

No.

Okay.

Nope.

So there's this family split.

When Assyria rises up, they take over the northern kingdom.

And so the northern kingdom is now under their rule.

Yeah.

But they can't take Jerusalem.

Yep.

They siege it, right?

At some point?

They do.

They surround it.

Yeah.

Yep.

Yeah.

Actually, then there's Assyrian military chronicles that were discovered and deciphered and dug up.

There are references to Sennacherib's attack on Jerusalem.

He was the

Babylonian king.

The Assyrian king.

Sorry, the Assyrian king.

And so Babylon comes later.

Now, in the big world history side of things, while Assyrian is the first empire on their heels, the next empire is

Babylon.

That's right.

So Babylon rises to power.

And when they rise to power and then they come through,

Jerusalem does fall to Babylon.

And that's the big exile.

When I think of the exile of Israel,

I think of that one.

Yeah, that's right.

But really, there was kind of two waves of Israel falling.

And in the first wave with Assyria, Jerusalem doesn't fall.

So it's kind of this moment of victory amidst the tragedy.

That's right.

And you're saying Isaiah lives through the Syrian attack.

He predicts that Jerusalem will stand.

It does, but he also can see prophetically something's around the corner.

Jerusalem won't stand.

Yep, that's right.

Yeah.

So when he wrote his poetry about a future Davidic king who would rescue Israel or Judah and rescue everybody, he's writing it before Babylon rose onto the scene.

But his poems endured and were treasured by his disciples who are responsible for the shape of Isaiah as we have it.

And they treasured those poems as referring to something even more ultimate than whatever happened in Isaiah's own day.

The main poem I want to show us is chapter 11, which we've looked at elements of this passage many times in the past.

But this is a retelling of the future deliverance moment.

the road back in.

Isaiah is really interested in depicting the road back in.

The road back into what?

In terms of our Exodus template, there's the road out of oppression.

There's the road in between the wilderness journey.

And then the road back in.

And so who needs to go back in?

So Isaiah, he's thinking of a moment when Israel has been scattered because of its defeat at the hands of these imperial oppressors.

He's thinking forward.

He's thinking forward.

And that there will be a day when Yahweh brings his people back into the land.

And the back into the land is

like Joshua bringing the people into the land.

You got it.

Yeah, exactly right.

So, with all that said, that's the note in the sequence that he's highlighting here.

And let's pick it up, Isaiah 11, and we'll just start reading.

We'll see what happens.

So, Isaiah 11, 1 through 16, the first panel of it goes verses 1 through 9.

I'll just start reading the first part.

So, a shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from its roots will bear fruit.

Jesse was David's dad.

King David's dad.

If Jerusalem has fallen, then King David's dynasty is over.

It's a stump.

Yeah.

But

something's coming out.

Yep, that's right.

So a new David.

It's a poetic way of saying a new king like David.

And just like David, man, when people were around David, they noticed there was a presence about him that he seemed particularly charged by the Spirit of God.

And that's true in the stories about him in the book of Samuel.

So also for this new David, the Spirit of Yahweh will rest on him.

And then you get a list of six additional,

whatever, angles or ways to describe the spirit.

Yep, that's right.

Yeah.

That lead up to a total of seven descriptions.

So the spirit of Yahweh, one, spirit of wisdom, two,

understanding, three,

a spirit of counsel.

Counsel here meaning like wise, insightful.

I mean, advice feels too trite.

Well, how is this significant compared to wisdom and understanding?

So wisdom is about practical skill and know-how.

Craftsmanship almost.

Understanding

is kind of the broadest term of like you get how something works and what it is.

Yeah.

Counsel is about strategy.

Okay.

Interesting.

But Hookma wisdom is strategic.

Oh, that's right.

Yes.

So in what way is this kind of a different type of strategy?

Oh, counsel is about making plans.

Okay.

It's about the plans that you make.

Okay.

Wisdom can just be like, I understand this particular metal and how to craft it.

Right.

I know how to carve into this wood.

I know how to make this beautiful thing.

That's right.

But the planning of like, how is this all going to work together in a big kind of metaway?

That's right.

That's okay.

Yep.

That's counsel.

Yep.

So a spirit of counsel, that's the fourth thing.

A spirit of might, like straight up power,

just like gets things done,

makes them happen.

A spirit of knowledge, knowing,

and then of the fear of Yahweh.

And his very breath is the fear of Yahweh.

It's an interesting line.

He will not judge, and here judge is being used in the sense of to oversee, to make calls.

To discern between.

Yep, discern between.

Yep.

So he will judge, but not by mere eyesight.

He will intercede, that is, get involved in disputes and conflicts.

and take sides, but not based on just rumor, what he hears with his ears.

No, he will judge the poor with righteousness.

He will intercede for the needy of the land with uprightness.

So would you say he is he's not easily

fooled?

Fooled, yeah.

Yeah.

He can see through what's really going on.

Yeah.

The principles of doing right

and uprightness, that's what drive his decisions.

Yep.

Which means he will strike the land with the rod of his mouth.

He will put to death the wicked person with the breath of his lips.

Righteousness will be a belt around his waist, faithfulness a belt around his loins.

Wow, sounds like a wise, effective leader.

Strike the land with the rod of his mouth.

What does that mean, a rod of your mouth?

Okay, so a rod is like a scepter, a ruler's scepter.

Okay.

But also, if you we might say a club,

you know, there's many cultures that have a ceremonial like war instrument that is a symbol of royal power.

Oh.

I mean, isn't that?

The trident?

Is that Aquaman's?

Yes, yes.

That's right.

The trident.

I was thinking more like Germanic tribes were like a war club.

Yeah.

I don't know.

But yeah, something like that.

Which means that if there are people in the right who are being oppressed, he'll deliver them.

If there are people in the wrong who are oppressing, he will take care of them.

And it's applied to his mouth because

you issue decrees.

He's issuing decrees.

You issue your judgments.

You are guilty.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay.

You are in the right.

Okay.

And he'll put to death the wicked person with the breath of his lips.

Yeah.

His word.

His word

brings justice.

And his judgment and justice

could bring death.

It'll bring death.

He can save life or he can end life.

And in the powerful guy.

In the hands of an unwise person, that's a dangerous power.

Terrifying.

But in the hands of somebody who's got the sevenfold wisdom of Yahweh, you can trust that it will be just.

I think that's the image here.

Yeah.

All right.

So that all feels like, all right, I can imagine a king from the line of David doing that stuff.

Yeah.

There are humans who are like this sometimes, you know.

The next part of the poem that gets real cosmic Garden of Eden-like, these are famous lines.

The wolf will reside with the lamb

and a leopard will lie down with a kid that is like a baby goat

and a calf and a lion and a even a fat little calf together and a small boy will lead them about and a cow and a bear will graze and their young will lie down together and the lion will go vegan He'll eat straw like the cattle.

What's with the small boy?

So we've got these chaos creatures

becoming

harmonized in a way they don't bring chaos anymore yeah the predators like the food chain gets upended yeah yeah yeah and there's harmony

okay and there's a bunch of like questions about what does that mean exactly yeah totally lions can't eat straw they just they can't yeah

it's got to change their digestive system or something yeah but the small boy right at the center center of this, the small boy will lead them.

Yeah, so there's two panels, that first and the third, describing this piece between predator and prey.

And then there's one little line as the pivot between them as the small boy.

Children are vulnerable the way that lambs and little goats or calves are vulnerable.

But it's a human.

And for a human to lead the animals,

that's what humans are called to do on page one.

Yeah.

Right?

Rule the human.

So this is a new atom

but we just got the new king why does the king rule them when oh yeah yeah totally now it's like okay the small boy it almost feels like a shepherd boy and it's like sort of shepherd animals yeah like david kind of yeah yeah

yeah suggestive there's probably a lot more to say but the point is both it's a vulnerable human a little human but exercising a role of oversight over predator and prey so that they follow this boy's lead and my hunch is that it has to do with in the larger context of the section of isaiah is all about the arrival and the birth of a new king from the line of david

a son is born to us to us a child is given and his name will be called that was from chapter nine okay so the small boy is the king to come you could take it that way yeah it's the image of the coming king yeah Because the next line, an infant will play by the serpent's hole, and a toddler will even just put his hand right into the the viper's hole.

Yeah, the snake has no power.

Snake has no power.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Seed of the woman.

They will do nothing bad.

They will not cause any ruin on all of my holy mountain.

Oh, wow.

This is all happening on a holy sacred mountaintop now.

Because the land will be full of knowing Yahweh like the waters cover the sea.

So all of this is a poetic image of what it looks like when all humans and all

creatures and all life

is in a relationship of intimate knowing with

Yahweh.

There's no bad, raw.

That's from Tov and Ra.

But they will not do bad.

They will not do bad.

So nothing raw

is done.

And just try and imagine that line, waters covering the sea.

So when I look out at the ocean,

I just see

immersive and only water.

So what if I looked out at creation and all I saw was creatures in a knowing, loving union with their creator?

That's the depiction.

Yeah.

So that's a rad poem, just right there.

Yeah.

That looks like the final road in.

Ah, it does.

A depiction of a final, we've arrived at the promised land.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Now, who's that for?

Here's the hinge pivot of this chapter.

It's just one verse, one set of poetic lines, verse 10.

And it will come about on that day that the root of Jesse, and you're like, oh, yeah, yeah, I remember that, who will be standing as a signal to the peoples, the nations will seek him.

Ah.

So if we've got the holy mountain, the Eden Mountain, then on the top is a root, which is,

oh, this is a colleague of mine, Jacob Stromberg, who's written a lot on Isaiah.

He pointed this out to me for the first time.

Notice the tension of the metaphors.

Roots are typically underground.

Oh, yeah.

But this root is standing up high like a flagpole.

It stands up as a signal,

which is like a banner.

Like think of the big flag banner.

The root is a flagpole.

Yeah.

Oh, interesting.

The underground thing that sprouts up is actually

like a tree.

Like a tree with a big flag signaling for all the nations to come.

And the nations will seek him and his resting place will be pure glory.

Like the glory on top of Mount Sinai or the glory that hovered over the temple.

Just God's glory.

Okay, here we go.

Here's another thing that will come about on that day.

Verse 11.

The Lord will extend his hand out a second time.

We actually read this multiple multiple episodes ago in this series.

First time being

when he extended his hand to save Israel from oppression in Egypt.

Yep, yeah.

Except this time he's extending his hand a second time to acquire the remnant of his people that is left remaining in

Assyria, Egypt, Pathros, Kush, Elam, Shinar, which is Shinar is what really old word for Babylon.

Hamath, and the coastlands of the sea.

And he, that is Yahweh, will raise a signal.

Ah, that's where that signal's going to come from.

Yahweh will raise up the signal

and gather the outcast of Israel, gather the scattered ones of Judah from the corners of the earth.

Okay, so we started with this picture.

It felt like kind of the final road in, but the picture actually really was like saying

i'm gonna gather the people in yeah we're actually backing up aren't we yeah okay thank you that's good so we just said the lord's gonna send out his hand that's a signal for the road out yeah because the people are sitting in oppression right under different empires yeah because in the first part of the poem yeah all the land is filled with the knowing of god it feels complete yeah that's the end feels like the end yeah and then it all of a sudden is like actually this is really just the place where the banner is going to to fly, where the signal is going to go out, where the call for the road out begins.

Yeah, that's great.

In other words, the poem is out of sequence in terms of the three steps.

The road out, the road in between,

the road in.

It begins with just being in the promised land.

And then you're told, who?

That root of Jesse is going to stand as a signal to draw everybody.

Oh, that's how everybody's going to get there.

So the root of Jesse is introduced at the beginning of the poem.

And we learn just how

awesome he is.

And then

we learn what happens because of him.

So you're saying that's kind of a flash forward?

Yeah.

I see.

The poem begins with the end.

Yep.

And when it says on that day,

verse 10, and it will come about on that day, I'm thinking that day where everything's made right.

Oh, yeah.

But that day is, no, that's a different day.

On that day is kind of a signal often used in prophetic books to connect poems next to each other or collections of prophetic oracles to connect them,

but it has a very loose meaning.

Okay.

It doesn't mean, and what happens next?

Yeah, it doesn't mean what happens next.

Yeah.

It means, and in connection with that,

is this thing.

On that day.

But you've got to think about the connection as the reader.

This next thing's connected to that last thing

as a part of the thing that God's going to do.

But it actually, the cause-effect sequence works in reverse.

You get the end result at the beginning.

Okay.

And then you get what brought us there.

Now we're going to find out how is everybody going to get into that holy mountain

that's filled with knowing y'all.

Why don't they just write these poems in order?

Yeah,

I guess it makes it.

Make us stop and puzzle for a second.

I think what we're doing right now is what the poem is designed to make us do.

It's a feature, not a bug.

So what we're told is

in the middle that all the nations are going to come to that.

Now what we're told is specifically the two houses of Jacob,

the split house of the north of Israel and southern Judah, they're all going to come together.

God's going to bring them out.

And they were just called all as one thing, his people, the remnant of his people that's out there.

Then verse 13, which we stopped at, I'll just summarize, which talks about how the jealousy and the hostility of the northern tribes and of the southern tribes will, there'll be peace.

Okay.

So that family drama

pre-exile will be healed.

Will be healed.

Yep.

And it'll be like the story of Joshua's day is all over again.

They'll come back into the promised land and no one will stand in their way.

They'll get the promised land for real this time.

Okay.

So not like Joshua.

I guess not like Joshua.

And verse 15.

And Yahweh will divide the tongue of the sea of Egypt.

Oh, yeah.

And will wave his hand over the river.

That's the Euphrates.

So the Sea of Egypt was like our first water crossing deliverance.

Sea of Reeds.

Sea of Reeds.

But then to come back from Babylon or Assyria, you don't have to go

through Egypt.

You have to cross the Euphrates River.

And he's going to dry up that river with a hot wind too.

He'll strike it into seven streams and make it passable by foot.

Oh, that's a new image.

Isn't that good?

Instead of the walls,

he kind of like turns it into a bunch of mini rivers you hop over.

Yeah, you can hop.

Isn't that great?

And then this kid, the last line of the poem.

So there will be a highway from Assyria for the remnant of his people that remains, just like there was for Israel when they came up from the land of Egypt.

The road out.

The road out.

So the poem begins with

what does it mean to be in the promised land with the Messianic leader,

not just Israel, all the nations.

And it will begin, however, with Israel and how?

It'll be a second Exodus, but from Mesopotamia.

not Egypt.

Mesopotamia is where Babylon and Assyria are.

Yep, that's right.

Yep.

And the key thing is notice the mention of the road.

The highway.

Called the highway.

The Hebrew word mesilah.

Oh, this is cool.

So mesilah is a noun comes from salal, which means to pile up, but to pile up rocks.

Oh, because if you're making a road through a territory that has a lot of valleys or

hills, we're talking about actually, this is how roads are built today, still.

Are they?

I've never made one.

But think like if you're doing a long interstate drive.

Yeah.

and it's a level.

Yeah.

That was happened by bulldozers.

Yeah.

Dynamite and whatever else, you know.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So in the same way,

a highway means actually high.

The word high.

No way.

Of course.

A highway.

That's why it's a highway.

Yeah.

It's built up.

Yeah.

And that's the Hebrew word is the built-up.

Mesilah.

The masilah.

The built-up road.

Highway.

Highway is a great way.

So what's so cool is this poem and that specific image, Yahweh's going to make a place holy, mountain.

It will be the glory presence there with the Messianic king.

It will draw all the scattered remnant and make them one again in the land.

And then all of the nations with them.

So this is just chapter 11.

And then this set of images.

which are new Exodus images, just get replayed and deployed throughout all these different parts of the book, but in these new creative ways.

So I guess

it's just the way the Bible works in general.

But the way it happens within Isaiah is super cool.

But really, you could just stop right here.

You're like, that's the package deal right there.

Well, it doesn't talk about the road between.

That's right.

So, shall we?

Okay.

Yeah, let's turn to some poems that talk about the road between.

So, Isaiah 1 through 35 is a set of three big collections, and it's almost entirely poetry.

There's a little narrative in chapters like six through eight.

But there's a big, long narrative in Isaiah 36 to 39.

And it's all about when Israel was saved from Assyria when it was surrounded by Assyria's armies.

And it was delivered through the faithfulness of a descendant of David named Chizkiyahu, Yahweh is strong.

Hezekiah.

Is how we say his name?

Okay.

And then right after his like hero moment, the next story, chapter 39, is about how some emissaries from Babylon came.

And he was so enthusiastic, he just took him on a tour

of everything in his palace,

everything in the city, the royal treasury.

Come check it out.

Yeah, but not the temple.

He didn't take him to the temple.

He's working the angles here.

to protect himself from another, you know, the next time Assyria comes around, I should have some allies.

And so Isaiah comes and gets in his business and says, You stopped trusting in God, and now you're trusting in Babylon.

Babylon's gonna actually be your downfall a couple generations from now.

And then that's the end.

So he passes a test, and then he fails the test.

And then the next three sections of Isaiah, chapters 40 through 66, which have three big chunks, fast forward as if we are now on the other end of the Babylonian exile.

It's happened.

Okay.

Babylon's come, taken out the city, and now the prophetic voice is speaking from the vantage point of we're sitting in Babylon waiting for God to do the things like Isaiah 11 talked about.

We're still waiting.

Okay.

That's the context.

And so Isaiah 40 is a significant pivot.

This is the beginning of the second half of Isaiah.

Yeah.

Okay.

It's It's a confusing poem, but like it's the prophets.

Like what parts are not confusing?

Yeah.

But they're also famous lines.

I don't know if they're famous lines, but they are well-known lines, depending on what group of people you're with.

But it comes out of the gate.

Isaiah 40, verse 1.

Y'all bring comfort.

Y'all bring comfort, says your God.

Y'all speak.

to the heart of Jerusalem and call out to it

because her warfare, or perhaps her service, her time of service, has been completed.

Her iniquity has been satisfactorily dealt with, for she has received from the hand of Yahweh double for all of her sins.

Double.

Double, yeah.

So

Israel apparently has now been sitting.

completing a term of service, a prison sentence.

Oh, this is this is in Babylon.

Well,

they're sitting, yeah, as we're going to find, outside the land.

Yeah.

As a result of their sins.

This is the

exile.

This is what they need to erode out from.

Yep, that's right.

And someone is saying God is giving a message to y'all that y'all should announce the time of comfort is here.

The time of

suffering for our sins is over.

The time of comfort has arrived.

That is God's message here and now.

And so a voice cries out, in the wilderness, y'all should prepare the way of Yahweh.

Y'all make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

Every valley will be lifted up, every mountain and hill brought low, every crooked place made straight, the rough places into a plain, and the glory of Yahweh will be revealed, and all flesh will see it together.

The mouth of Yahweh has spoken.

The wilderness is

a road that the glory of Yahweh travels through

in order to arrive somewhere.

Oh, okay.

So it's the road between.

It really is the road between.

The road between.

And notice all of the highway building language here.

Yeah.

Yeah, you're blasting through the mountains.

You're making a straight highway line.

Yeah, interesting.

But what's interesting is the focus is not on the people traveling on the road.

It's on God.

Oh, yeah, the highway for God.

It's God's road.

And when, apparently, when it arrives, prepare the way of Yahweh.

Yahweh's coming.

And it's Yahweh's road.

And when he builds the highway and travels on it, he will arrive somewhere where the glory of Yahweh will be revealed.

Like, oh, yes.

Remember the poem in 11 that said, when the route from David stands as a signal for all the nations to come,

his resting place will be glory.

The glory of Yahweh will stand up like a city on a hill.

But right now, Yahweh and his people have been far away.

So this is Yahweh's road end.

Yeah.

Remember, 11 said there would be a highway going all the way from Babylon to the European Union.

And I thought that was to bring the exiles back in.

Exactly.

But let's think about that road from another angle.

Who's going to make that highway?

Yeah.

And who's the first to travel it?

Yeah.

And who's going to lead and guide them?

So what we're evoking is the wilderness stories from the road between,

which was all about the glory cloud

and the fire leading the people.

Or the Ark of the Covenant.

Yeah.

Right.

Leading the people into the land, like in Joshua.

and so we're just going to focus on not the people we'll get to that right now let's just make clear the only way this highway is coming is for god to make it and for god to lead the way for the glory of yahweh to make jerusalem the city on the hill yeah

so these words were hugely significant and the new testament authors

matthew mark luke and john all in their different ways quote from these words to talk about the mission of John the Baptist down by the Jordan River.

Yeah, that's what John the Baptist says.

Yeah.

Or these words are applied to him.

What he was doing was preparing the people.

So Mark begins, the beginning of the good news about Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God, like it is written in Isaiah the prophet.

And then Mark quotes from Isaiah.

Okay.

Look, I send a messenger, prepare the way, the voice in the wilderness.

John the Baptist appealed in the wilderness.

So John becomes like these messengers preparing the way.

And then the glory of Yahweh coming

is Jesus

being announced by his father as

this is my son.

So that's how they respond to it.

Got it.

It's also cool, this is just a little side note, but Isaiah 40 was also significant for the community that's responsible for the Dead Sea Scrolls.

They talk about this passage a lot.

They were the messengers preparing the way.

Yeah.

And what's cool is that that was happening 600, 500 years after the return from exile.

So many Jewish people still had a sense that even though

we're back in the land,

we're not in Isaiah 11's version of

the road in.

We're in Judges version.

We're in the cycle.

We're in the cycle.

We're in the cycle of bad rulers making a mess of things.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that's a cool way how the highway, it's God's highway.

But there are other passages in this section of Isaiah that focus on the highway from another angle.

Chapter 43, this is a rad poem.

This is Yahweh speaking to the people who are in exile.

but who have received this call.

This is what Yahweh says.

The one who created you, Jacob,

and the one who formed you, Israel, is from Genesis 1, verse 1.

Form, Yatzar, that's from the Garden of Eden story.

Yeah.

You must not be afraid because I have redeemed you.

That's the Exodus.

That's the Exodus story.

Language.

I've called you by your name.

You are mine.

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you.

Ah,

yes.

Yep, I remember that.

When you pass through the rivers, they won't flow over you.

Yep, dry ground.

Dry ground.

So that could be the Jordan, but then also remember, Isaiah 11 was the Euphrates River, too, will dry up.

Okay.

When you walk through fire, you won't be burned, for the flame will not scorch you.

Fire or water?

Flood or furnace.

I am Yahweh, the Holy One One of Israel, your rescuer.

That's the key word.

This is interesting.

I give you Egypt as a ransom,

Cush and Seva

in your place.

Yeah, I don't know what that means.

Here, just quick.

Because you are precious in my eyes, you are the honored one, I love you.

I will give people in your place and nations in place of your life.

This is tricky.

So the key word is ransom or redemption.

Okay.

This is about purchasing a slave's freedom or trading slaves.

It's a slave trading language here.

Okay.

So I'm going to give you Egypt as a ransom for what?

Ah, so I will give Egypt as your ransom.

What does that mean?

So you are in slavery right now.

And if you're going to be ransomed, you have to be purchased with somebody.

Okay.

Or purchased by something of value.

Oh.

So how about this?

I'll sell Egypt as a slave to free you.

Egypt's going to take your place.

Yeah, you're ransomed.

So you have to hear the irony in that.

Okay.

Because Egypt, of course, was their great oppressor.

The ones that were oppressing you are now going to be the trade-in.

The trade-in to free you.

Okay.

Yeah.

So the oppressors will become the oppressed and you will get to go free.

Okay.

Got it.

Yeah.

Don't be afraid.

I'm with you.

I'm going to bring your seed from the east and gather you from the west.

Okay.

And you're like, oh, yeah, Isaiah 11.

Yeah.

Yep.

Yep.

That's right.

I'll say to the north, give.

And to the south, don't withhold.

All right.

Bring my sons, bring my daughters.

Everyone called by my name that I created for my glory, that I formed,

the ones that I've made.

So it's such a creative kind of reuse of all the language of Isaiah 11

with sprinklings of the seven-day creation story, Garden of Eden story,

and the Exodus story all put in a blender.

Yeah.

So that's the road out.

Yeah.

Right there.

Okay.

From all over coming in.

They're streaming in.

That's right.

Let's go down to verse 16.

You're going to need a lot of highways, not just one highway.

That's totally.

And you're going to need a lot of food and water along the way.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Verse 16.

Thus says Yahweh, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters, who brings out chariot and horse and the army and the mighty one, together they go down and cannot rise.

So he's hearkening back to, hey, remember what I did to Egypt?

I brought you through the sea.

Yes.

Egypt's chariots and horses were drowned.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Then verse 18, don't remember the former things.

Wait, well, you.

You're just talking about them.

What do you mean?

He says, don't remember the former things.

Don't even think about the former things.

Look, I am about to do a new thing.

This is all like a poetic way of saying the old things,

really what they're about.

is the new thing.

Yeah, because you could say like, well, God, I know that you did that, but look, we're still stuck here.

Yeah.

Let's do it again.

How's it going to be fixed?

That's right.

Yeah.

But this is going to be something new.

Yeah.

So, look, I'm about to do a new thing.

See, now it is sprouting.

And that's the word used of the plants that come up out of the ground on day three when God splits the waters.

Yeah.

And then the dry ground appears.

And the fruit trees sprout about.

And it's this word.

Yeah.

Is it the same word in chapter 11, too, of that poem?

That the shoot will.

Yes.

Tzemach.

Tzemach.

Yes.

Okay.

Yeah, totally.

Cool.

Don't you see it?

Verse 19?

Look, I will make a way in the wilderness, rivers in the desert.

Ah, there's the water you're talking about.

The wilderness road's going to be long.

Yeah.

We need some water there.

Yeah.

And notice the inversion.

So he parted the waters to make dry land.

And now they're going through on the dry land.

So he's going to give some waters.

That's the inversion of Genesis 1 and 2.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

Genesis 1, too much water.

We need dry ground.

Yeah.

And then Genesis 2, too much dry ground.

We need some water.

We need some water.

Yeah, totally.

Yeah.

Yep.

Even the animals of the field will honor me.

Jackals, ostriches, because I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people.

You know, the people that I formed for myself.

so that they can make known my praise.

Think of the song of the sea in Exodus 15.

So everyone in the nations will know

we're meditating on the road in between the wilderness

it's the wilderness on the way back in

to the land but don't think about the old way out

the old way out was a symbol pointing to the thing I'm going to do now yeah which is a new way out and a new road in between to a new and ultimate way in.

Something like that is how the imagery imagery works.

So in the Exodus proper, Israel out of oppression, through the wilderness, into the land.

In the land, they lose sight of Yahweh.

Things go awry.

Family drama, corruption, violence, injustice.

And so they're in the promised land, but they're not.

Like it's really the promised land isn't actually materializing as promised land, as blessing to the nations.

And so then they go out of the land, and this is exile by Assyria and later Babylon.

And so now Israel, again, just like Israel in Egypt, Israel is out in the nations

under the rule of other nations.

And so you're like, okay, we need a new Exodus.

We need a new road out.

And then we need to go back to the promised land.

And we get this Isaiah Isaiah 11 poem that's like, yeah.

And when we get there on the mountain of Yahweh, when everything's made right, like, here's this picture of really, truly being in the promised land.

And to get there, there's going to be this king

who just knows what is good and bad, and he's just, he's powerful, and there's going to be a highway that Yahweh himself will

ride in in front of us.

Like paving the way.

Paving the way.

Yeah.

And then we will all come out from every corner

back into the land.

And while we do that, it's like going through the wilderness again.

Yeah.

Yep.

We're going back through the wilderness because that highway back is not going to be easy, but I'm going to provide water.

I will be with you.

And if you're thinking to yourself, I've seen where this story goes,

I know what this, this, we're going to get into the land and then it's going to be bad and get all in again.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like, even though I'm having you recall all of this, don't think that we're just going to cycle through this

perpetually.

That's good.

In other words, even as he's retelling what feels like just an instant replay,

he's saying, but don't think of those former things.

Yeah.

This isn't like, it is like that, but it's also not like that.

But it's new.

Something, it's really something new.

Yeah.

and yeah a new thing is sprouting a new creation but then when all the exiles do come back into the land it isn't the new thing

no

which is why these chapters of isaiah kept speaking to israelites back in the land for centuries and centuries

even up to the time of jesus and the apostles and the Dead Sea Skull community.

They all were still saying, like, if these poems mean anything,

the new thing hasn't happened yet.

It's not as simple as, once we're here, we're here, but we've already learned that.

We learned that it's not as simple as when we're here, we're here.

That's what Joshua and Judges were all about.

And so it's not a surprise.

So, what is the highway?

And who is the king?

And then what is the promised land?

Like, all those things now are hanging in the air.

Yeah, that's right.

Isaiah 58 comes like a bolt out of the blue, accusing this generation of Israel sitting in exile as being just as corrupt and distorted as the previous generations.

So Isaiah 58, cry loudly, don't hold back, raise your voice like a trumpet, declare to my people their transgression, and to the house of Jacob their sins.

You're like, wait, I I thought

we dealt with the sins.

Yeah.

Doubly so.

I thought exile was like the end of that.

Okay.

They seek me day by day.

They delight to know my ways, like a nation that does righteousness, that hasn't forsaken the ordinances of God, and they ask me for just decisions and delight in the nearness of God, saying, oh, why do we fast, Yahweh?

And you don't seem to notice.

Why do we humble ourselves and you don't pay attention?

Well, I'll tell you why.

On the day of your fasting, you do what you desire and you oppress all of your day laborers.

That's what you do.

And when you fast, your communities are full of hostility and strife, people striking each other with evil fists.

You can't fast like that and then make your voice heard in heaven and expect things to work out.

I'm kind of paraphrasing as I read along.

Here's the fast that I choose.

Is it just one day to humble yourself?

Verse six, this is the fast that I'm down for.

Loosen the bonds of wickedness.

Undo the bands of the yoke and let the oppressed go free.

In other words, they are Pharaoh.

You have become Pharaoh.

Yeah, you're still doing it.

Yeah.

Which judges told us that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So if you were to do that stuff,

then your light would break out like the dawn, like day one of creation.

Then your recovery would come speedily.

Your righteousness would go before you, and the glory of Yahweh would be your rear guard.

I remember that.

That's, yeah, Exodus 14 again.

That's yes.

So this is recalling the moment when Yahweh went behind them

out of Egypt to protect them from the armies of Egypt.

And then verse 11, he also refers to, then Yahweh would continually guide you and satisfy your desires in scorched lands.

So he's talking about like a new wilderness journey.

Oh, interesting.

But they're in the land.

Yeah, totally.

Yes.

There's no road out when you're in the land.

That's right.

Yeah.

So now they're back in the land,

but they are Pharaoh, and there's all kinds of poor Israelites suffering, and like they're now the oppressed ones, and there won't be a road out or a safe passage through the wilderness until you start doing right by your neighbor

and dealing with the injustice within Israel.

So the call to leave Egypt is now a call to repentance.

I mean, this is John the Baptist.

What Isaiah 58 is saying is what John the Baptist was telling the people to do, a baptism of repentance.

Why did he choose the wilderness?

And why did he choose the Jordan River?

Yeah.

And why did Jesus think that in order to begin his announcement that the kingdom of God is here, he needed to go identify himself with

pass through the waters.

Israel passing through the waters.

And Isaiah kind of gives you the template.

Like you can be

in the land, but actually still need to take the road out of the land, not geographically, but in terms of how you're treating your neighbor.

And so the land can become the land.

Yeah.

Then you got to wake up and realize, like, oh, we're not in the land.

Yeah.

In fact, I'm part of the oppressor.

When the road out of the land

is really supposed to keep you in the same place,

but just change it fundamentally.

Now we're talking about repentance.

Repentance.

Talking about a change of

the way that you exist in the world,

not where you're going.

Yeah, that's right.

So here the oppression in Egypt becomes a true metaphor

for a way of relating to my neighbors and therefore to God that is like unto what Pharaoh did to the Israelites.

But here at the Israelites, to other Israelites.

So the way into the land now is just straight up get on your knees, pray to God for mercy, and then go start paying a fair wage to your workers.

Do what is right.

So why do all the gospel authors begin with John the Baptist at the Jordan River?

All four of them do.

Why is that important?

Yeah.

That's always been a bit of a puzzle for me.

Yeah.

And why do all of them begin echoing Isaiah 40 or straight up quoting it?

They're trying to get us to see that John the Baptist was announcing this new Exodus.

But it was the Exodus of Isaiah's version, which is we don't have to go anywhere.

Yeah.

We have to

leave somewhere in terms of our hearts and our habits of relationship.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Bible Project Podcast.

Next week, we'll explore the theme of the Exodus Way in Psalms.

We're going to take one more stop in the Hebrew Bible before we get to John and Jesus, which is to see how the Exodus and the New Exodus feature in the Psalms, because they also will supply a bunch of important images that'll get drawn upon by Jesus and the apostles.

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