The Fall
Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! Isaiah 5:20 NASB
Evil good – The history of Mankind, as the rabbis note, is a nightmare. Empire after empire followed the path falsely attributed to Alexander Tytler: “Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage.”[1] The prophets excoriated Israel leadership for the same reason we find today’s political hacks repulsive. Liberty has given way to selfishness, apathy and a willingness to accept comfortable bondage. The few wish to govern the many. No one can be trusted. At the end of most empires in human history, the populace was reduced to economic and political slavery, even if they were not imprisoned. In Rome, for example, people left newborns on the road since the taxes were so high they could not afford children. Today we practice the same genocide in a more “humane” matter (really?). The Roman elite pacified the population with gifts while emptying the public coffers for their own gain. Sexual license had two distinct applications—what the rich could get away with versus what the poor were obligated to follow. Isaiah marked the decline hundreds of years earlier. Leadership called evil good and good evil. God was sent into exile along with morality. Heschel is right: “ . . . when immorality prevails, worship is detestable.”[2]
“The decay of conscience fills the air with a pungent smell. Good and evil, which were once as distinguishable as day and night, have become a blurred mist. But that mist is man-made. God is not silent. He has been silenced.”[3]
“Instead of being taught to answer the direct commands of God with a conscience open to His will, men are fed on the sweetness of mythology; on promises of salvation and immortality as a dessert to the pleasant repast on earth. The faith believers cherish is second hand: it is a faith in the miracles of the past, and attachment to symbols and ceremonies. God is known from hearsay, a rumor fostered by dogmas, and even non-dogmatic thinkers offer hackneyed, solemn concepts without daring to cry out the startling vision of the sublime on the margin of which indecisions, doubts, are almost vile. We have trifled with the name of God.”[4]
Isaiah calls such abominations replacements. The Hebrew verb (śûm) basically means, “to put, to place, to set.” It’s putting evil in the place of good, elevating it to lofty status, acting as if it should be mimicked. With single voice the prophets decry leadership that subverts God’s role and God’s rule. The cultural waters are muddied until everything looks the same. God judged Israel severely for this atrocity. Not just the leaders but the entire people shared in the responsibility and the punishment. It’s hard to imagine the same is not true today.
Topical Index: evil, good, substitute, leadership, Isaiah 5:20
[1] The real author seems to be Henning Webb Prentis, Jr.
[2] Abraham Heschel, The Prophets (Hendrickson Publishers, 1962), Vol 1, p. 195.
[3] Abraham Heschel, Man Is Not Alone, p. 152.
[4] Ibid.
