COMFORT CHAPTERS ......from Zion reflections

Va’etchanan

Haftarah reflections 44  

Torah portion                    Deuteronomy 3:23 to 7:11

Haftarah portion             Isaiah 40: 1-26    

             

Listen to the Prophets

The Haftarah studies in Isaiah, which commenced last week, continue for the next seven weeks. Chapter and verse additions are a relatively modern convenience, and it has been observed that the 66 chapters of Isaiah appear to mirror the structure of our complete Bible, which has 66 books. The Hebrew Scriptures have 39 books, the Apostolic Scriptures 27, and Isaiah seems to have messages which appear to follow that kind of division. Our parashah today, Isaiah 40, begins a succession of, what are called, ‘comfort’ chapters. It certainly has the Messianic tone with which the Apostolic Scriptures commence..

“’Comfort, yes comfort My people’ says your God.”  Many Christian organizations working in Israel today use these words as a command of God to provide material assistance to those in need in the land. A noble work, and certainly well received by the needy there, and a work which has verifying authority in other Scriptures. But that is not the primary message of this exhortation of Isaiah. God has instructed Isaiah to “speak comfort to Jerusalem, and cry out to her, that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned; for she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.”  That is the message of comfort which Israel receives from Isaiah. And it is a message which has its fulfilment in the coming of Messiah.

Prophetic Scripture often has multiple fulfilment, and that is true of our parashah today. Messiah Yeshua came to this earth almost 700 years after this prophecy was given. History records that many tens of thousands of Jews came to faith in the first century c.e. (Acts 21). John the baptizer was that ‘voice crying in the wilderness’ of verse 3, and he was definitely one who said to the cities of Judah “Behold your God!” But this prophecy has elements which have yet to be fulfilled. Isaiah sees the time when “her iniquity is pardoned” completely. That could not be the case, when in the second century, Israel was completely banished from the Land of Israel by the Romans. That could not be the case when history records the pogroms and mistreatment Jews received at the hands of many nations to which they fled. And often, during the period known as ‘the inquisition’ given the option of abandoning their faith or being put to death. Being banished from Britain in 1290 by King Edward 1, a ban which remained until Oliver Cromwell in 1665. Banished from Spain in 1492, one day before ‘tisha b’av’, by Ferdinand and Isabella. Six million Jews put to death in the holocaust. If that does not constitute receiving “double for all her sins”, I am at a loss to explain it.

The prophet continues, “Behold the Lord God shall come with a strong hand”. One of the reasons many Jews could not see Yeshua as Messiah was that they did not see Him as the ‘strong man’ Messiah they expected, and still expect. They were, at that time, looking for a Messiah who would overthrow the tyrannical Roman rule to which they were subject. Isaiah describes such a Messiah in this parashah. All powerful, all mighty, all conquering, all caring, all protecting, all forgiving.

In praise of Almighty God, Creator of the Universe, the prophet writes eloquently “To whom then will you liken God?” Then in comparison to the most skilled artisans they could imagine, he describes, in simple language, the attributes of the One who is their redeemer.

“It is He who sits above the circle of the earth.”

“Lift up your eyes on high, and see who has created all these things’”

It is He who created all things, He who put all things in right order, He who has the power of life and death, it is He, and He alone, who has the power to ‘pardon iniquity’.

What greater comfort can anyone receive than to know that one is pardoned of all iniquity? To have the barrier to communion with a Holy God swept away, cast into the depths of the sea, forgotten, as though that iniquity never existed.  There is NO greater comfort.

Isaiah is describing the conditions which are the hallmark of “The New Covenant”. He sees the time when men will live righteously before our Holy Creator, and with each other. “For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more” says Jeremiah 31:34

It is the time when Messiah Yeshua returns to rule and reign in Jerusalem. It is the time, of which, the Apostle Paul declares “All Israel will be saved”. It is the time when Israel will recognize Him, with eyes now opened.  And it is a time of joy for all Gentiles who are ‘grafted in’ to that ‘natural Olive Tree’, which is Israel.

Shabbat Shalom

RS