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PDF FormatThis reading of Isaiah, deeply ingrained in the consciousness of Jew and Christian alike, ignores the content of Isaiah’s vision as offered consistently throughout his book—including the immediate context. The extended passage reads:
Therefore thus says the Lord the Eternal of Hosts, strength of Israel: Lo, I shall be relieved of my inciters, and avenged of my enemies.... I shall return your judges as in the beginning, and your advisors as at the start; after that, you shall be called the “City of Justice,” the “Faithful Community”.... And the transgressors and sinners shall be destroyed together, and deserters of the Eternal shall be annihilated.... And it shall be in the end of days that the mountain of the Temple of the Eternal shall be established as the highest of mountains, lifted above the hills, and all the nations shall stream unto it. And many peoples shall go, and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Eternal, to the Temple of the God of Jacob, and learn from his ways, and go in his paths,” for out of Zion shall flow teaching, and the word of the Eternal from Jerusalem. And he shall judge among the nations, and castigate many peoples, and they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruninghooks; nation shall not raise its sword against nation, and they shall learn war no more.50
Isaiah envisions not the miraculous, spontaneous abandonment of force in favor of brotherhood, but something entirely different: The return of Israel to its land, the restoration of Jerusalem as a political and moral center (“for out of Zion shall flow teaching”), the reestablishment of Jewish “judges”—who in the biblical idiom are political-military leaders—and the gathering of the nations to hear their judgment. Only once God “shall judge among the nations, and castigate many peoples,” and is “avenged of [his] enemies,” and when the truth and justice of the Jewish faith are backed by Israelite muscle, will the peoples of the world succumb to this idea and “beat their swords into plowshares,” abandoning their independent military aspirations. Indeed, Isaiah envisions an end to war—but through Israelite victory, not compromise.
This becomes even clearer upon examining the rest of Isaiah’s vision.51 Spanning sixty-six chapters of which the bulk deals with the relationship between God and the people Israel, the book of Isaiah builds up to a climactic depiction of the end of days, in which God directs honor to Israel like a “river of peace” after judging and punishing the nations for their wickedness:
For thus says the Lord: “Behold, I will extend peace to her like a river, and the glory of the nations like a flowing stream.... For lo the Eternal shall come with fire, and his chariots like a storm, to quench his anger and fury in flames of fire. For by fire the Eternal judges, and by his sword all flesh, and many will be those who perish at the hands of the Eternal.... And I, for their acts and thoughts, come to bring together all the nations and tongues and they shall come and see my glory. And I shall place among them a sign, and send of them survivors unto the nations... those who have not heard my name nor seen my glory, and shall tell of my glory to the nations. And they shall bring all your brethren from all the nations as an offering to the Eternal ... to my holy mountain Jerusalem....”52
Reminiscent of Joel, Isaiah predicts the gathering of the nations to receive judgment “for their acts and thoughts,” in which “many will be those who perish at the hands of the Eternal,” while political Israel is reborn upon its land. Elsewhere in Isaiah, God compares the fate of his chosen people, whom he calls “my servants,”53 with that of the enemy nations: “Therefore thus says the Lord Eternal: Behold, my servants shall eat, while you shall hunger; behold my servants shall drink, and you shall thirst. Behold my servants shall be happy, and you shall be shamed. Behold my servants shall rejoice of good heart, and you shall scream in pained heart, and shall wail of broken heart.... For behold I shall recreate the mirth of Jerusalem, and the rejoicing of her people.”54 Again, the Israel that eats, drinks and is happy while her former oppressors see their downfall harkens back to the time of Solomon, when the Jews were “eating, drinking and rejoicing” while they “ruled over all the kingdoms” in the region—kingdoms which until then had striven to destroy the Jewish nation. As with many of the other prophets (Micah, for instance, quotes the biblical description of Solomon’s kingdom directly when he envisions “every man beneath his vine and fig tree”55), Isaiah’s paradigm for the kind of peace which will reign in the messianic age is that which prevailed in the days of Solomon.
This understanding of peace as the fruit of victory is also evident in a second passage in Isaiah, equally famous for its apparent vision of world peace without the option of force. This passage predicts that in the end of days, the “wolf will dwell with the lamb, the panther will lie down with the kid.” Yet again, a look at the broader context reveals not that a “peaceable kingdom” will suddenly appear when adversaries elect to lay down arms, but that this idyllic result is intimately connected with Israel’s defeat of its former oppressors:
And a branch shall go forth out of the root of Yishai [David’s father], a branch shall blossom from his roots. And there shall rest upon him the spirit of the Eternal, a spirit of wisdom and understanding, a spirit of counsel and heroism, a spirit of knowledge and fear of the Eternal... And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the panther lie down with the kid, and the calf, the lion and the fatling shall be led together by a small child.... They shall not do evil, nor be corrupt upon my entire holy mountain, since the world will be filled with the knowledge of the Eternal, as the waters cover the seas. And it shall be on that day, that the root of Yishai, who will stand as a banner among the peoples, to him the nations shall turn, and bring offerings in his honor.... And he shall set up a banner for the nations, and assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth. The envy of Efraim will depart, and Judah’s enemies will be cut off. Efraim shall not envy Judah, and Judah shall not vex Efraim. But they shall despoil the children of the east; they shall lay their hand upon Edom and Moab, and the children of Amon will obey them. And the Eternal shall utterly destroy the tongue of the sea of Egypt....56
A look at the broader passage reveals that the wolf dwelling with the lamb becomes possible only when the tribes of Israel lay aside their differences (“Efraim shall not envy Judah, and Judah shall not vex Efraim”), and unify to conquer and rule over their ancient enemies, Edom and Moab. Only when a powerful Israel has “despoiled” these nations will the latter defer to the “spirit of wisdom and understanding” that characterizes the new Jewish hegemony.57 Again, Isaiah makes a pointed reference to Solomon, in describing a messianic king to whom “the nations shall turn, and bring offerings in his honor”—an allusion to the Israelite kingdom at its peak, whose regional military domination led all its neighbors to “bring offerings” to King Solomon.58 To Isaiah, as to the other prophets, the end of days brings forth a reborn Solomonic power that has obtained peace for Israel by fighting off its enemies, and has built a great civilization that will contribute decisively to the world’s moral and religious development.
While the prophets employ Solomon to describe the national peace that will reign in the reestablished Jewish kingdom, they frequently return to the story of Pinhas for analogy when describing the character of the messianic king himself. Isaiah envisions a Pinhas-type king who is possessed of the righteous fervor that rescued Israel from Midianite corruption in the book of Numbers. Employing literary allusions, Isaiah draws a direct parallel between Pinhas and the new king:
The people that walked in darkness has seen a great light; those who dwelled in the land of the shadow of death, a light has shone upon them. For you have broken the yoke of his burden, the staff of his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, as in the day of Midian.... For a child is born to us, a son given to us, and he shall carry the governance upon his shoulder, and his name shall be “Wondrous Wisdom, Heroic Leader, Lasting Father, Prince of Peace”—for the expansion of the kingdom, and for everlasting peace upon the throne of David and upon his kingdom, to perfect it and found it in judgment and righteousness, from now until eternity—the vengeance of the Eternal of Hosts shall do this.59
