Isaiah 8

Why do people not read the Old Testament more? I imagine it's because of passages like this one- it's full of incomprehensible Hebrew names and places, which seem to have had some sort of significance to the first people to read them, but are off-putting to us today. Is the only way to read a passage like this to get out a concordance or commentary, and work out who all these people are? Or should we just ignore the stuff we don't understand, and skip straight to a verse or two that we can make sense of? One thing that reading through Isaiah one chapter at a time is showing me, is that the second option is not a valid one. the bits we might chose to pull out rarely mean what we might expect them to. It is worth pausing and asking what message they gave to the people of the time- even if that doesn't seem to be a message that is relevant to us today. This is a book that tells us about God, not offers us a quick fix for our problems and concerns. So in the middle of this chapter, we read some confusing stuff about God:

For the Lord spoke thus to me while his hand was strong upon me, and warned me not to walk in the way of this people, saying: Do not call conspiracy all that this people class conspiracy, and do not fear what it fears, or be in dread. But the Lord of hosts, him you shall regard as holy, let him be your fear, and let him be your dread. He will become a sanctuary, a stone one strikes against; for both houses of Israel he will become a rock one stumbles over- a snare and a trap for the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And may among them shall stumble; they shall fall and be broken; they shall be snared and taken. Bind up the testimony, seal the teaching among my disciples. I will wait for the Lord, who is hiding his face from the house of Jacob, and I will hope in him.


This God is not one we find easy to understand. Why does He chose to hide His face? Why doesn't He explain what's going on? Why should He appear to let some fall and be broken? Why can He be called a sanctuary in one breath, and a snare and trap in the next?
It is too easy to dismiss this severe version of holiness to the pages of the Old Testament, and chose to either ignore it, or believe that it has been superceded by something more forgiving and therefore palatable. Except that we come up against exactly the same verses quoted by Paul in his letter to the Romans, in Romans 9:33. We have to take this theology seriously, and keep wrestling with God as He is actually shown to us in His word, not who we might Him to be like.