Comparison to ‘living away from home’ and interpretation of the text in Isaiah 40

‘See Thy God’

- Consolation by God and ‘homecoming’ of displaced people in Isaiah 40

-December 2000 - Christmas Week

Isaiah 40:1~11
1. Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.
2. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for, that she has received from the LORD'S hand double for all her sins.
3. A voice of one calling: "In the desert prepare the way for the LORD; make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God.
4. Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain.
5. And the glory of the LORD will be revealed, and all mankind together will see it. For the mouth of the LORD has spoken."
6. A voice says, "Cry out." And I said, "What shall I cry?" "All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field.
7. The grass withers and the flowers fall, because the breath of the LORD blows on them. Surely the people are grass.
8. The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever."
9. You who bring good tidings to Zion, go up on a high mountain. You who bring good tidings to Jerusalem, lift up your voice with a shout, lift it up, do not be afraid; say to the towns of Judah, "Here is your God!"
10. See, the Sovereign LORD comes with power, and his arm rules for him. See, his reward is with him, and his recompense accompanies him.
11. He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young.

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Since crisis of IMF, Korea’s economy has been in hard times. More so, only the common people are more suffering. To people without even any leased room, it is much more hard times.

I am about to speak of the situation 100 years ago. Around 1900, our country has been in very hard times politically and economically.

The War between Japan and Russia, the Sino-Japanese War,...the Japanese annexation of Korea, and such other political turbulences made a country’s economy more troubled. Like a shrimp being crushed in a battle between whales as a Korean proverb goes, the conflicts between states made people more suffering. The hardships of life went more and more devastating day by day. At that time of days, 70% of the people engaged in such primary industry as agriculture and fishery.

However diligent farming many peasants do on others’ lands, if they split the profits fifty-fifty(50:50) with the owners of the lands in fall, and if they pay a variety of taxes to the government or authorities, then it is impossible to endure themselves until the next year barley harvest time with the remaining cereals. This situation produced the saying, ‘get over the barley hump.’

This level of situation is based on when things are average crop or good harvest.

If a drought or typhoon brings about a bad harvest or epidemic diseases, enduring with hunger remains an everyday thing like the proverb, ‘Everyday brings its bread with it.’ Such proverbs as ‘as poor as a church mouse (as poor as an anus to be torn, in Korean),’ and ‘get over the barley hump’ demonstrates our former ancestors’ hardships of life. The novel ‘Land’ shows, a year of bad harvest makes people hunger, cry and die, while the aristocratic landlords or rich folks make much more money as severer year of bad harvest it is.

Unable to see their young children and old parents die with hunger, poor peasants barely led their wretched lives alive with the cereals into which they exchanged from their last-remaining land registration certificates, while rich men had their possessions increase still more through the land legislation certificates into which the rich men exchanged from the lives of poor folks. If another year of bad harvest came in after years, they had to marry their daughters off as if to sell them instead of their land registrations, and their fathers and children had to be into farmhands of rich men’s houses... In these repeated cycles of bad conditions, many folks in late Chosen Dynasty leave their native villages behind and become vagrants, or they leave for other countries. (See Nehemiah 5:1~5)

In times of there being no law international or no agreement between nations unlike nowadays, having their feet on strange lands away from homeland - to live even in other countries - means that they had to live much harder lives than the emigrants’ ones modern days.

In hard snowy winters, from southwest or southeast region of the peninsular, they moved, carried only their various household goods and their children and elders on the oxcarts, with others carrying any bundles on the backs, walked across the ice on their straw shoes in the teeth of winds from rivers in chilly winter, and drifted across the rivers into the lands, which include the Maritime Province of Siberia, North Gando, Central Asia,... Some of them moved over to Japan, some of them far away up to sugarcane farms in Hawaii, and some up to cactus farms in Mexico.

Their hardships didn’t stop here. There is nothing awaiting them in the land they tread on gulping down their tears in their hard minds. There was nobody who would give them any piece of land, any bowl of meal or any loaf of bread.

You might have seen black slaves beaten by white men for farming in movies. In times of our ancestors drifting into other countries for the first time 100 years ago, they began their lives in a similar situation, too. This is the early emigration history of the Korean race which began with the displaced people of the Chosen Dynasty.

In this land as well, though a little less severe condition than homeland, they had to lie on the face before the men of the foreign country, pleading for help almost like beggars. If they somehow borrowed a patch of land for farming, the rent paid in kind was enormous. ... In fact, the ‘most urgent project’ of the early emigrants was to subsist anyhow with their children.

In the meantime, their children were growing up. Once grown up, they saw things around with heart palpitations of puberty. In more years of passing, they met their life partners to make a home. After their children born, they lived with flurried restlessness through their 20s and 30s to be of old age. Their robust iron bodies of younger days become ill here and there over ‘decades of living in strange lands’.., and what is left for them is only the skepticism, “What does it gives us behind, having worked so hard and painfully!’

Eventually, they find themselves only their old-growing adolescence left behind, at the cost of taking so much pains to death for their years of 10, 20,...in a strange country, strange land.
(In a similar story, I once saw an account of TV news dealing with farmers or flower-raising people who became so grieved and so angered because they had been burdened with only the debts of 10~200 millions, instead of savings accounts and real estate increasing at the price of their working so much to death from morning till night for 10 years long.)

Below the moon emerging roundly on the Manchuria plain in autumn, skepticism and sorrowfulness overwhelms the heart of a dispatched person with a sick body left over after all the life in a strange land. The ‘grief in a strange land’ sometimes turns into sobbing. (It is now a mere matter of a old popular song,) but if popular singers in those days such as Go Boksu and Hwang geumsim come for the performance in Manchuria in a few years, they would come to the concert after one or two days’ walk with all the money they collected during their lives and earnestly request “Let me have a look at it, please” to see the performance.

“How long have I been in a strange land?
By the count on the fingers
Ten or more years since away from home
Once a youth turns this old
. ...

Omission
.....

The willow tree in the home village
Will still be green this spring,
But gone are the days
When I played a flute made of its twig.”
....

If Go Boksu sing passionately the song, ‘The Life Away From Home,’ the concert hall has weeping women here and there. Afterward, men too turn red around their eyes. (The part ‘Going Home’ in Dvorak’s ‘New World’ Symphony too is similar to Go Boksu’s ‘The Life Away From Home.’ Only, the difference is, the displaced people in ‘Going Home’ are not Korean but Czech. And yet both have the same background as painfulness of being away from home which early emigrants suffered.)

‘Sadness in the life away from home,’ ‘weariness in the life away from home’ and ‘despair and emptiness in the life away from home’ in their deep hearts occasionally led them finally to a suicide, as overwhelmed with the lyrics of Go Boksu’s ‘The Life Away From Home.’ It is not the same popular song as we now consider.

It is that Go Boksu so nicely represented the ‘life in a strange land’ one would like to whine about. ‘How long have I been in a strange land? By the count on the fingers...’ Isaiah 40~55 is a part where you cannot explain without knowing such ‘grief of the life in a strange land.’

Isaiah 40 is divided into 4 parts. Let’s look at each group of verses 1~2, 3~5, 6~8 and 9~11.

Verse 1~2 is an introductory line, ‘Comfort, comfort my people, says your God,’ leading the rest of chapter 40.

The form is like an inspection parade in the army. If the frontmost flag-bearer shouts ‘Comfort’ after receiving a command from the platform, the next flag-bearer succeed to the ‘Comfort,’ until it is transmitted to the last row. The word ‘Comfort’ is that Israelis had received twice the punishment about all their sins from the hands of Yahweh. Twice the punishment doesn’t always mean two times.

It is that, to those who cannot bear the weight of their fate any longer, he says “Now it is enough. Being punished has now come to a close.” They are hearing once again that the slave labor now to end up results from the wrongs of Israel. That is, only after they realize these wrongs can Israel have its own history go on.

Verses 3~5 mention the path along which God has Israel going home across the desert. But considering ‘the way’ is expressed as ‘the way for Yahweh our God,’ man can imagine this path was originally the way for gods just like the grand roads of the castle town Babylon.

The roads in the ancient New East are contributory to showing the authority and dignity of gods though grand triumphal parades.
Man can call these roads ‘the way to victory.’

However, ‘the path for Yahweh’ is of totally different nature. The glory of Yahweh has no dazzling parade of idols of gods, which Babylon celebrates. Instead, his people use the path as a return road toward their home. The tired and weary homeward-bound people replace the grand idols of gods.

It is that the homecoming of enslaved people was the action of Yahweh and the glory of Yahweh that is carried within His history. The emancipation from Babylon was an historical involvement by God, who reveals Himself unexpectedly (Isaiah 40:25, 43:14~21).

The returning Israel lost its political independence and its own land.
Moreover, so did its people, the Temple which was the source of vitality in the land, and their services in the Temple.
Now left over is only the word of God entrusted to Israel.

Verses 6~7 deplore a universal sigh about the transience of man’s life, ‘As numberless tribes perished, so are we the people who are dying out. So all the flesh are like grass.’

Yet, it was recognized God realizes his own intention only in the permanence ‘The word of God never dies (verse 8).’
Providing that a voice from verse 3 on is the shouting ‘Hear, and prepare the way,’ a voice from verse 6 on contrasts the grass-like life with the everlasting word, so it may bring a maximization of deep impression.

Among the shouts of ‘Comfort,’ verse 9 ‘See! Here is your God’ is the call that Judean cities as well as Zion deliver good news.

And the shouting from verse 9 below is, that one should announce that God liberates His people, and that a messenger of joy, Zion, should acclaim what already happened and pass it on to these cities.

A ‘messenger of joy, Zion’ is being told to proclaim Yahweh is now coming.
Though not yet is Yahweh’s advent accomplished, God’s voice says “Don’t be afraid, and shout and proclaim.” It says, Praise and shout the person who is to come to help his own people with a fully confident outcry - just as if the help is already at hand.
In its captivity land Babylon, Israel is now accepting the message by listening to and acclaiming Yahweh’s news of salvation who is soon to come.

What comes in Verses 9~11 is said to be not Israel but Yahweh Himself. Yahweh brings up the image of a ‘king who won in a war.’ In this occasion, Israelite people are out and out behind the scene. There, Israel is expressed as a prize which God brings along after a seizure of things in the event. God’s involvement and victory is expressed as His returning with His people.
More representative of Yahweh’s work than a brave soldier in a war or a triumphal king is the figure of speech ‘Yahweh is the Shepherd’ (verse 11).

Through this figure of speech, one can see a dignified affection of God, namely a compassionate affection toward the loser is expressed properly. The very one that the petitioners in the Book of Psalms anticipated from the Shepherd of Israel becomes a reality in the text of today. (See Psalms 23)

In ‘O Shepherd of Israel, hear us!’ (Psalms 80), God is highlighted as a person who hears of lamentations of them, as a shepherd who comforts and opens the way to hope for a person.

It tells each person finds the Shepherd’s protection they need and that they all participate in a pleasant homecoming parade.

In the realm of history, God can bring the strong down, make the humble higher. In the realm of nature, God can convert a wilderness into fertility, while the fertile land into a barren wilderness. But today’s text describes Him as a person who has full of compassionate affection toward each loser.

Now is time to conclude.

Isaiah saw Israel could come back home after their exile in Babylon because Yahweh God intervened in the history.
The contents of chapter 40 are apparently not real or direct.

The importance here in Isaiah 40 is that Yahweh’s word was proclaimed through poetic terms. The prophet is using poetic terms to highlight dramatic effects of salvation work for Israelite prisoners - carried out by God’s involvement in the history.

A step further, God’s involvement was not here completed. However, His coming into the earth as a ‘servant who emptied himself’ made the height in his involvement into the history. (Philippians 2:6~7)

We are waiting for Jesus Christ’s coming.
The one who we are awaiting is not the baby Jesus who came two-thousand-years ago, but one who comes so as to open up the closed parts in the society or country, and to fill up the low places. And he must be a good shepherd who comes with even the last single missing lamb within his bosom after he’s found it.

Bible tells Jesus shall come as ‘Immanuel’ (Isaiah 7:14, Matthew 1:23).
Immanuel means ‘God is with us.’
People Israelite lived in fear, thinking God deserted them. But the verse 9 is showing that all people Israelite are to greet Jehovah God again, hearing ‘Behold your God!’

The Word becoming flesh and being with us, Jesus left in the promise of his now coming back again some day. We are living in the waiting of Jesus’ coming back.

The stubborn believer in the words “I am with you always, even unto the end of the world (Matthew 28:20)” is the person of Immanuel belief, the person of good faith.

Everybody, please be preferably the stubborn ‘persons of faith’ in the message of Matthew 28:20.

*** My one, http://www.mryoum.com/skin_youm_html/eindex.htm is my personal homepage that I helped make, so that people might think over the fixed ideas that they have believed to be common sense about Man's life / religion / theology / sermon / handicapped person/ diabetes / culture / sex.... which have been commonly accepted so far.