All You Need is (Divine) Love

In the previous episode, Act IV of From Consolation to Catastrophe, the Jewish people, flanked by the Infinite God in front, and the God of Israel behind, seemed primed to enter history.

But not so fast.

The cosmic scene of divine assurance of last week yields to the domestic space of Zion, but she is barren, abandoned, backsliding.

God enters the scene telling Zion to ready her household for redemption: ‘Enlarge the place of your dwelling.’ She is to use the curtains, the cords, the pegs, the same materials used by Moses to build the miskhan, the dwelling place of God in the desert. The tent she builds is also a tabernacle, her home, a dwelling place for the divine.

A Little World, Made Cunningly

In the words of the 17^th-century poet, John Donne, Zion ‘is a little world, made cunningly,’ the first in a set of expanding concentric circles, a microcosm, in the end, for all of God’s creation.

We start, with Zion, in the center. In an earlier we watch Zion, in her dreamlike fantasy, imagining children she hardly recognizes, pressing, demanding more space on their return. Now God fulfills the vision – the people of Israel, flocking back, expands: spreading out right and left, breaking out of the confinement of exile and filling the land.

Isaiah tells a new creation story. Not Adam and Eve in Eden, but the people of Israel returning from exile, restored to their land. ‘Your offspring shall dispossess nations, and settle’—literally breathe life into—the land’s desolate towns.’ In Genesis, God’s breath brings Adam to life. In Isaiah’s vision, that same divine breath animates Zion. As the people return, the land itself comes alive.

But just as God reaches out to Israel, assumes her readiness for redemption, Zion pulls back. Her reticence is implied in the divine assurances that follow. Between the lines, she protests ‘I am unworthy; I am wretched, not suitable for marriage.’ She goes on: ‘you abandoned me’; and in a passive-aggressive tone: ‘why should I believe you now? She is wretched in her own eyes, yet her self-abasement doubles as a strategy of avoidance.

Isaiah insists, naming God, as both ‘your husband’ and ‘your Maker.’ First Isaiah shows God as Zion’s helpmeet in the confiding intimacy of the domestic. At the same time, He is Creator of the Universe, the impersonal God, Infinite, at his most inscrutable and majestic.

This God, the terrifying LORD of Hosts, bursts into Zion’s ordinary, everyday space. Your story, God tells her, is not confined to your tent — not domestic, not private, not even limited to Israel. Through Zion, the God of Israel will be acknowledged as God of the the whole world. But it all depends, God tells Zion, on you.

Israel’s mission is universal.

After the Flood

In this consolation it’s not Abraham and Sarah, nor David who make cameo appearances, but Noah. God’s vow to Noah never to destroy humanity again included within it, Isaiah relates, into a promise to redeem Israel from endless exile. The vow to ensure the continuity of the human extends to and, moreover, depends upon Israel. To avoid the destruction of Humanity, Israel must be redeemed.

The circles having expanded from modest tent, to tabernacle, to the Land of Israel, now contract back to the innermost circle, back to the domestic, the Jewish home in Zion.

Isaiah had first introduced God as ‘your God,’ then as ‘your Redeemer,’ and finally as ‘your Comforter,’ the God ‘who takes you back in love.’

Even if mountains and hills crumble, even if all of the other circles in God’s created world disappear, God’s eternal covenant of love does not move.

Upon that center circle of love, all Humanity depends.

Stay tuned.