The Other Side of the Prophecy
And the people will be oppressed, each one by another, and each one by his neighbor; the youth will storm against the elder and the inferior against the honorable. Isaiah 3:5 NASB
Oppressed – Contemporary believers often turn to Isaiah 2:4 as a description of peace in Millennial Kingdom. “And He will judge between the nations, and will render decisions for many peoples; and they will hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not lift up sword against nation, and never again will they learn war.” Sounds great, doesn’t it? A thousand years of peace (but not Pax Romana). Harmony. God in charge. Oh, we can wait for that day!
However, this anticipated tranquility is only part of Isaiah’s prophecy. Chapter 3 verse 5 is also included, and it’s not so nice. No one wants to live in a time when neighbors oppress each other, when the youth cast off the law and order of the elders, when honor is absent. Actually, that almost sound like our times. But we never got the tranquility and peace promised. All we got was war and more war.
Joel Hoffman points out that this prophecy isn’t for us at all. It’s for Israel, specifically for Judah and Jerusalem (“The word which Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem” Isaiah 2:1). But Christians have been so tempted to read it as Messianic that some of it is misapplied to us, that is, the context is ignored and only part of Isaiah’s prophecy is applied. If we read the whole prophecy concerning Judah and Jerusalem, we would realize that it is ancient history, not eschatological prediction. Plowshares and swords are symbols intended for Isaiah’s audience, not written so that we can interpret them thousands of years later. Unfortunately, this kind of context ignorance is typical in Christian eschatology. I can think of no better additional example than Genesis 3:15 (“He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel.”); a verse that becomes Messianic only when the post-Egyptian context of the Genesis story is ignored.
But just so you don’t think this is a diatribe against Christian exegesis, I should point out that the authors of the apostolic writings do exactly the same thing. From Matthew to Paul, these men disregard context when they cite passages from the Tanakh. They even go further, often rearranging the grammar, substituting words or deliberately combining texts from various ancient authors in order to provide justification for their agendas. In the past we have looked at many such examples in Matthew, and he is not alone in this method. The really important point is not that biblical authors played fast and loose with citations. The really important point is that no one objected! This was de rigueur in biblical times. When we read biblical prophecy, we should be aware that it is often prophetic because it is stripped of its original context. It shouldn’t surprise us that this same method is used today in rabbinic and Christian interpretation. The prophets didn’t have a problem with this approach. Neither did the Apostles. We are the ones with the problem, and only because we have applied modern ideas to ancient documents. Maybe it’s time to read those “prophecies” again.
Topical Index: prophecy, exegesis, context, Isaiah 2:4, Isaiah 3:5
