Day 207. Isaiah 35-37

Where are we now exactly?
God's people are on the road home. In the Book of Isaiah, highways appear again and again as symbols of liberation and return. Where have the people been? We have to assume that we have jumped far ahead in time, and they are returning from exile in Babylon. This oracle looks forward to the message of Second Isaiah, or Isaiah of Babylon, who is responsible for chapters 40-55. This prophet brings words of comfort to the Jewish exiles that have been carried off to Babylon after the city of Jerusalem is destroyed by King Nebuchadnezzar. Chapter 35 anticipates his message to the people in exile—there is a highway that will lead you home.
Probably the image of the highway harkens back to the path God makes through the Red Sea to save the fleeing Israelites from Pharaoh's army, and the way he leads them through the wilderness to the Promised Land. Now again God will lead his people, the "ransomed of the LORD" (35:10), through a wilderness that has become like the garden of paradise. The presence of God makes it so. This miraculous highway, "called the Holy Way" (35:8), crosses a land which will miraculously blossom "like the crocus" (35:1) under their feet, where no lion or "any ravenous beast" will threaten them. There is water everywhere—"the burning sand shall become a pool," the prophet says. The desert rejoices "with joy and singing" (35:2), and the people also "obtain joy and gladness" (35:10). But this joy is not fleeting happiness; it is everlasting. But this is the end of the story—the eternal return.
We are not there yet.
In chapters 36-39 a later editor steps in to give us some historical background to the prophecies of First Isaiah. We have already heard the story—it very closely parallels the account of the siege of Jerusalem found in 2 Kings 18:13-20:19. We hear again the Assyrian messenger mock the living God, and the assurance Isaiah sends to King Hezekiah—"Thus says the LORD: Do not be afraid because of the word that you have heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have reviled me" (37:6).
We hear again Hezekiah's desperate prayer in the temple, and the LORD's answer—"I will put my hook in your nose and my bit in your mouth; and I will turn you back on the way by which you came" (37:29). God renews his promise to the "remnant" and a "band of survivors"—"I will defend this city and save it, for my own sake and for the sake of my servant David" (37:35).
And he does. In the morning the bodies of the Assyrian soldiers lie heaped up in their camp, victims, we must suppose, of some plague or other, and the king of Assyria returns to his capital, where he is assassinated by two of his sons. A third son Esar-haddon succeeds him. The Assyrian menace remains, but Jerusalem is saved—for the time being. The essential message of Isaiah of Jerusalem remains the same, however—the city must be destroyed in order for God's plan to be accomplished. There will be an eternal return—but only after a lonely time of exile in a foreign land. The children of Israel must go back into bondage like their sojourn in Egypt in order to experience a second exodus and "come to Zion with singing."