The Poetry of God’s Name

In Act 4 of our seven act drama of consolation: God speaks!

In previous episodes, the people of Israel went to school. They learned to see God in the stars, and their history in rocks and stones. Last week, God revealed the covenant; and Israel learned how to read their history as part of God’s sacred time. Now Israel must ask Juliet’s question: what’s in a name? The People of Israel must learn the poetry of God’s Name.

In this week’s haftorah, God appears to Israel in at least nine guises: King, Lord of Hosts, Sovereign, as well as the more personal Elokeinu, our God, the God of Israel. Here in our drama, Isaiah introduces the God beyond words, the tetragrammaton, YHWH, who bursts into history.

‘I, Me, am He, the One who Consoles you.’

Finally. The prophet’s voice gives way to the voice of God. The author of our drama steps onto the stage.

God’s Great Story

‘You have heard about me in the third person,’ God explains. But now, the infinite God, first discovered by Moses at the burning bush, the God beyond and above time, addresses Israel.

From God’s perspective in which past, present, and future are simultaneous the predators, in constant readiness to destroy Israel, barely register on the divine radar. Israel’s fears are justified; their oppressors loom ready to strike. But from the perspective of the story as God already knows it, a story whose ending is already written, those threats are negligible. And so God scoffs: “where is the wrath of the oppressor?”

God comes off as callous, not because, as Christians say, the ‘Old Testament God’ is a God of justice, but because He is the divine Author of the Great Story. To the fears of Israel in time, God leaves to his prophet.

Isaiah shows Israel remaining ‘captive’ and ‘unredeemed,’ degraded and humiliated. Flattened into submission, they willingly become cobblestones on the road upon which their enemies tread. Isaiah calls in desperation, flat out of resources: “who will comfort this people? It’s not that Isaiah has a bad memory – God had just announced: I am the one who consoles. But, even for the prophet, it’s hard to see the remembered future of redemption, amidst the heavy burdens of present suffering.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the Eternal God gets practical- divine tachlis. God reckons the Egyptian oppression paid off, but of the Babylonian exile, He asks: “so what do I get out of this?” From God’s divine prospect, Israel’s exile is without purpose, their suffering without meaning, and worse still, His name reviled daily. So God rescues Israel from the endless ‘tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow’ of meaningless history, for their sake, and for the sake of His name. In God’s Great Story, Israel is the protagonist, charged with the mission to learn God’s name; the Babylonians, it turns out, do not even play a cameo role.

‘I am here!’

At Sinai, God revealed His essence to Moses in the ineffable Name, “I will be who I will be.” In Isaiah, there is a second revelation of the Infinite God: “therefore they shall know in that day, that I am He that doth speak: Hineni, I am here.”

The full knowledge of God – the “I” and “He” –  the paradoxical poetry of God’s name – will only be revealed ‘on that day,’ in Israel’s future time. But now in history, God proclaims Himself present to Israel, as Abraham once proclaimed to God: Hineni: I am here. Isaiah’s revelation is that not only God’s words at Sinai, but his own words  sanctified by God, carry divine authority. The infinite enters history to sponsor a new kind of poetry: not only God’s from Sinai, but the sacred poetry of the prophets.

Isaiah’s prophesy makes the world sing: first the heralds standing on mountaintops, then to the lookouts on the city walls, singing together in joy. Even the ruins of Jerusalem join in the song: “The God of Israel reigns.” This is divine time in history: the walls are still in ruins, Jerusalem still desolate, but songs of hope and faith, even in unredeemed history, sring out.

The last scene brings us back to Israel in present time, with God offering parting advice to Israel for their journey out of exile: “stay away from the impurity of death; and “do not forget the stolen Temple vessels!”

The two Names of God, I and He, flank Israel in front and back, as they get ready for their entrance back into history: the Eternal will go before you and the God of Israel in the rearguard. In the front, the Eternal God, leads the way to redemption. In the rearguard, the God of Israel, Elokeinu, our God, fights off the the predators and the dangers of history.

So what’s in a name? For Israel, everything and nothing – for God’s Name is both unutterable and ever-present, the Eternal “I” and the historical “He,” a name that cannot be named, except that makes God’s eternal presence felt within history.

To be continued.

The journey toward consolation has begun, but the full embrace of God’s mercy is yet to come. Next week, Zion will awaken to a promise she never expected, one that could change everything.