Sunday’s first reading comes from the book of Isaiah, the Old Testament book most read at our Sunday Liturgy of the Word. This book has three editions. The first edition (Isaiah 1-23,28-39) originates with a prophet named Isaiah in the southern kingdom of Judah during the decades before and after the northern kingdom of Israel falls to the Assyrians in 721 B.C.
A second edition adds chapters 40-55, the words of a second Isaiah who spoke for God in exile in Babylon at the time the Persian King Cyrus began to conquer the Babylonians (540 B.C.). A third edition adds chapters 56-66. These prophecies come from a period after Israel’s return from exile.
Second Isaiah, from whom we read this Sunday, is the great prophet of the exile, the one who recognizes something new is afoot in the victories of King Cyrus over Israel’s Babylonian captors. Second Isaiah sees the arm of Yahweh at work in this new conqueror who will allow the exiles to go home and rebuild their city and themselves as the people of God.
The God for whom Second Isaiah speaks is the God who made the heavens and the earth, the God who once brought Israel out of Egypt, and the God who is about to bring the exiles home. Israel’s God — who in the beginning separated the sea from the dry land and in former times opened a dry path through the watery chaos of the sea — is about to lead Israel home across the dry desert. Rivers will spring up for them to drink on the way.
In every age God does something new! Remembering the past will help one perceive what is coming in the future. Yahweh is above all the one who fulfills all hopes and is indeed worthy of praise.
God brings us better times.
Thus says the Holy One, the one who opens a way through the sea,
a path through the waters,
who leads forth chariots and horses, a powerful army,
until they lay dead
where they stand, snuffed out
and quenched like a wick.
Don’t remember these early times,
or think about the events
of long ago.
See, I am doing something new
that springs forth now.
Do you not perceive it?
I make a path through the desert
and put rivers in the wasteland.
The wild animals honor me —
jackals and ostriches —
for I provide water in the desert
and rivers in the wasteland
for my chosen people to drink.
These are the people
I have made for myself
to tell my praise.
Isaiah 43.16-21
- What part of Isaiah’s prophetic poetry captures your imagination?
- What do you perceive God doing in our times? What is springing forth new in our world or in your life?