1. What does Isaiah say about idolatry?
(1) It is absurd to compare an idol with God (40:18ff).
- How can a manufactured article, made from inferior materials because of the inadequate resources of the person who commissions its manufacture, compete with God (40:19-20)?
- An idol is static, in contrast to the dynamism of God as the Creator-King who rules over all human kingdoms and the sun, moon and stars (40:20 cf. vv12-17, 21-26).
- God’s people are his witnesses that he is the only true God, their Redeemer and the only Rock of salvation (44:6-8). By contrast, other so-called idol-bound gods have no power to deliver those who trust in them (44:9ff). It is therefore an expression of profound blindness, culpable ignorance (occasioned by a hardening of the heart against true reality), self-delusion and outright stupidity to worship before idols (44:18-20; cf. Rom 1:21-23).
Compare the wording of 40:25 (“To whom will you compare me? Or who is my equal?” says the Holy One”) with these questions from a hymn of Ishtar (Merrill, 10):
Who is equal to me, me?
Who is comparable to me, me?
Even the choice of wording mocks at Babylonian idolatry.
Merrill (11) also cites from Akkadian hymns to show how Isaiah is composed so as a deliberate polemic against Mesopotamian claims as to the power of their deities:
Mighty, glorious son, light of the lands,
Creator of all the totality of heaven and earth are you,
O lady of mankind, creator of
All things, who guides
The whole of creation.
My god, holy one, creator of all peoples are you.
This depth of language use shows clearly that Isaiah cannot be charged with an unsophisticated trivializing of idolatry, as though it simply consisted in a superstitious treatment of images. At the same time as Isaiah attacks the brazen outward expressions of idolatry, showing their banality, he also carries on a frontal assault on the entire worldview associated with the worship of such images.
(2) It would be absurd to try to represent Yahweh with an idol-image since there is no likeness that could compare with him (40:18; cf. Deut 4:12-18).
(3) Idolatry runs roughshod over the Creator-creature distinction.
Because Yahweh is the Creator any attempt to represent him with an idol necessarily involves a refusal to accept Creator-creature distinctions. The very ‘making’ of an idol involves this, because in some sense people are trying to reduce the Maker down to some level which they deem to be manageable or suitable for their purpose. Further, the making of idols dehumanizes those who make them, as Isaiah amply shows. This is another way in which creation is corrupted.
(4) Idols do not control the course of history (41:5-7).
- God’s people complain that their mishpat (“justice”) has been neglected by God (40:27); that he has failed to do what is right by them by failing to honour his covenant commitment to them; that he has not done this because he is but a local deity incapable of overcoming the power of and behind world empires. However, God is the Creator-King who is responsible for the rise of Cyrus and the Persian empire – the one who summons all nations for mishpat (41:1), that is, to demonstrate before all the nations that he controls history so as to honour his covenant commitment to his people. God reassures his people that, unlike other peoples, they have no reason to fear the rise of Cyrus, because he has chosen them and will uphold them and exalt them and provide for them (41:8-20). Indeed, God will use his Servant (people/individual), as an embodiment and encapsulation of Israel, to display mishpat to all nations – that he is indeed faithful to his people (42:1ff). Note here especially the deliberated linguistic contrast between 41:29 and 42:1 (“Behold/see”).
- All peoples are terrified at the looming threat posed by Cyrus and the burgeoning Persian empire. They look to their idols for strength (41:5-7). However, this is farcical because the only real strength these idols have to offer is the strength expressed in good soldering and being well-fastened with nails so as to be immovable.
- Yahweh challenges the idols to demonstrate that they control history by foretelling what they are going to do to meet the threat posed by Cyrus (41:21ff). Their impotence demonstrates they are non-entities and that those who make them are therefore detestable in God’s sight (41:24). Hence the description “their metal images are empty wind” (v29).
- When God delivers mishpat for his people, while other peoples are routed by Yahweh, idolaters will be “utterly put to shame” for trusting in carved images and saying to metal images, “You are our gods” (42:17), since, as God-controlled history has demonstrated, they are non-entities.
- As in Isaiah 41, so too in Chapter 44, Yahweh calls upon his people to serve as his witnesses to the fact that he is the incomparable Creator-King who has controlled the course of history so as to demonstrate his faithfulness to his people. By contrast the idols worshiped by other peoples are non-entities because they are utterly incapable of protecting them from the terrifying historical developments that God is responsible for engineering (44:9ff). Consequently, all who make such idols will be put to shame. It is farcical to think that manufactured idols, made from the same wood used to provide cooking fuel, can serve as those who will deliver their worshipers from such historical threats. It is therefore idiotic for people to pray to such idols, saying “Deliver me, for you are my god!” (44:17).
- Isaiah clearly presupposes that when idolaters pray to their idols they are associating such idols with the deities to which they pray. Consequently, Isaiah’s lampooning of idolatry still carries full force against the protest that intelligent religionists of the ancient world did not identify the idol-images themselves with the gods they represented. The fact remains that the very use of the images presupposes an essential bond between the images and the gods to which they are associated. Indeed, in the ancient world it was standard to view idols or images as containing the fluid or spirit of the god. Consequently, Isaiah is merely replicating the accurate diagnosis of Deuteronomy. That is, when God’s people entered Canaan they were ordered to destroy all idolatrous objects and the sacred sites pertaining to such idolatrous worship on the clear understanding that once all of these had been destroyed the gods with which they were associated would cease to exist. That is, the “gods” depend for their continued existence and power and influence on the presence and operation of such idol-images and external, visible apparatus. This is a massive point of contrast with the Yahweh of Isaiah 40-55 who, not withstanding the total destruction of Jerusalem and Temple, continues to control the course of history and work out his purposes for his people.
- As other peoples see Yahweh controlling history so as to honour his commitment to his people, they will acknowledge that Yahweh is the only true god (45:14-15), the only Saviour (45:15-16). The makers of idols will be put to shame because the very historical events that will demonstrate Yahweh’s power and show him to be the redeemer of his people will also show the impotence of other idol-bound gods to deliver those who worship them. In contrast to other idol-bound gods Yahweh is the only Saviour, as the only one who controls the course of history, as demonstrated by his prior announcement of what he would do (45:21).
- The impotence of idol-bound gods to deliver their people is reinforced by the image of them being burdens carried on weary beasts. For this is what such idols really are – burdens for their people. They can’t even deliver the weary beasts from the weight they are carrying, let alone the people who worship them. Their impotence is further demonstrated by the fact that such weary beasts are carrying them into captivity (46:1-2). This is especially powerful because the gods concerned, Bel and Nebo, are the main Babylonian deities. That is, the Babylonian empire is doomed to be overrun by the Persian empire and this will be the fate of Babylon’s gods. By contrast, Yahweh has never allowed himself to be associated with idol-images and therefore there is no way in which it can be said that Yahweh himself had been carried into captivity.
- Over and over again Isaiah reinforces his central point, the impotence of idol-bound gods to deliver those who cry out to them for deliverance. Whereas those who worship such gods have to carry the burden of having them, it is Yahweh who has borne the burden of carrying his people (46:3ff). As the one who carries his people Yahweh is mobile in sharp contrast to the stationery idols, whose fixed position underscores the limited scope of the gods associated with them, all typically local gods in the ancient world, whatever the rhetoric. Over and over again, Isaiah stresses that Yahweh, by sharp contrast, alone controls the course of history, making him utterly incomparable.
“In summation and in doctrinal reflection, the conclusion must be that the sovereign Lord planned from outside of time and history and carried out His plans within time and history. That’s why He is so different—unlike men or their gods, both of whose planning is fragile because of too many variables and unknowns and because of that, they have a total incapacity to forecast the future accurately. Since He cannot be likened to men, any suggestion of faulty, incomplete knowledge will pull down the incomparable to the comparable and simply slot Him into the prevailing pantheon” (Craigen, 174).
(5) Idols are not sources of revelation, only Yahweh reveals truth.
- It should be noted that in highlighting the fact that Yahweh is the only God because he alone controls history, Isaiah particularly emphasises what God has said and how God has honoured what he said.
- Note how in the context of lampooning idols the following questions assume considerable prominence: “Do you not know? Do you not hear? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?” (40:21; cf. v28). All of this is rooted in the Prologue to Isaiah 40-55, namely 40:1-11, which stresses the fact that “the word of our God will stand forever” and how the “gospel” is to be preached that God is coming to deliver his people from captivity and lead them forth in a New Exodus, a work of new creation. It is foundational to the whole polemic against idolatry that Yahweh has revealed himself and reveals himself.
- In this context the blindness and ignorance and stupidity of idolaters takes on fresh significance. Their idol-making is indicative of their complete dislocation from true divine revelation. Note the contrast of 44:9ff with 44:7-8, the challenge for others to compete with God by revealing as he has revealed: “have I not told you from of old and declared it? And you are my witnesses!”
- Note the contrast between 45:19 (“I did not speak in secret, in a land of darkness; I did not say to the offspring of Jacob, ‘Seek me in vain.’ I the LORD speak the truth; I declare what is right”) and 45:20, idolaters with “no knowledge”, with the essential contrast cemented at 45:21: “Who told this long ago? Who declared it of old?”
- Note 46:7: “If one cries to it, it does not answer or save him from trouble.” Presumably the “answer” is not merely the act of deliverance but also the revelation associated with such deliverance, though perhaps, if Isaiah anticipates that priests might presume to relay such an answer, he is implying worshipers would have no real confidence in such contrived responses. Note again the sharp contrast in verses 8-9, stressing Yahweh as the God who reveals truth, “declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying ‘My counsel shall stand and I will accomplish all my purpose… I have spoken, and I will bring it to pass; I have purposed, and I will do it” (v11).
2. Is Isaiah fair to so lampoon idolatry?
Obviously, not everyone thinks so. So, for example, George Soares-Prabhu, an Indian biblical scholar, as he seeks to interact with the Bible with “an Indian Mind, that is, with the sensibility proper to an Indian Culture”, is deeply offended by Isaiah’s polemic against idolatry (other people’s religious practices) as expressed in such passages as 44:9-20. He regards this lampooning as a “dishonest caricature of a meaningful religious practice”, something “one does not expect to find in a religious book” (Lee, 3).
Lee (3) comments:
The attack is framed in a polemic and ironic taunt song, intending to laugh and satire against people of other religious and ethnic communities which the biblical author confronted in an exilic situation. It is unfortunate that Christians, especially Western Christians, usually approve of the hostility and negation of other people’s religions in the prophetic passages.
So is Isaiah’s polemic fair?
(1) Yes, because the reality is that the gods worshiped by other peoples were bound to the images and idols that represented them, regardless of any attempts ancient intellectuals might make, like say Hindus today, to discriminate between the idols and the gods they represent.
So, for example, Lee (3), supporting Soares-Prabhu:
But Soares-Prabhu rightly observes that there is a deliberate misunderstanding of the religious sentiment expressed in the practice of bowing down in homage and reverence before an idol. To the worshipper, the wood or metal that is used to shape the image of a deity functions only as a medium through which the divine presence is represented after an idol is “consecrated” in ritual. The God is perceived as making the divine present through material representation. Reading from the religiously plural Indian context, Soares-Prabhu therefore concludes that the passage is “a damaging and therefore sinful misrepresentation of a people’s religion and culture.
This is a poor response. First, “the divine” is left undefined and even apart from its association with an idol is a justifiable target for Isaiah’s invective since there is in truth no other god but Yahweh and Hindus are kidding themselves if they think their “gods”, “the divine”, even if disassociated from idols, have any real existence and any real power or ability to control history and act as sources of revelational truth (which is not to discount, as Paul will later explain in 1 Corinthians 10, the very real presence of demons in association with idolatry).
The response of Lee and Soares-Prabhu is additionally poor because the fact is that idols as used in Hinduism are nevertheless linked to “the divine” and do serve as ‘representations’ and Isaiah’s polemic attacks both of these false presuppositions. It is impossible, he teaches, to link true divinity to an idol or for an idol to serve as a material representation of the (only) true and living God and so to try to do so is indeed objectionable in the extreme and worthy of ridicule. Of course, Isaiah’s polemic belongs to a particular context, not that, for example, of personal evangelism.
Christopher Wright (9) comments,
…the criticism sometimes made that the prophet fails to understand the inner dynamic of idol-worship or to distinguish the material idol from the spirit, power or deity it symbolized or localized, is really beside the point for several reasons. What aroused the prophet’s scornful wonder was the sight of living man bowing in worship to something other than the one incomparable living God (cf. vv. 6-8)—regardless of whether that ‘something’ was the idol itself or the deity it represented. Furthermore, the prophet was, in fact, well aware of the difference between a material idol and the deity it supposedly figured. For in Isaiah 46:1f. he pictures Bel and Nebo, two prominent Babylonian gods, watching their idols being carried away by their worshippers in defeat and disgrace. Such is the impotence of these gods that they cannot save their own idols, let alone save their worshippers!17 And in any case, the prophet’s purpose here and in all these passages was not to describe the psychology of idolatry, but to contrast it devastatingly with the proven reality and power of Yahweh (Paul manages to do both in Rom. 1:18ff.). He was not the neutral chairman of a polite dialogue between the religions of Israel and Babylon, but the proclaimer of the imminent victory of the Lord of the universe and history, beside whom all other claimants to deity were indeed contemptible.
The whole OT (and the NT as well) is filled with descriptions of how Yahweh-Adonai, the covenant God of Israel, is waging war against those forces which try to thwart and subvert his plans for his creation. He battles against those false gods which human beings have fashioned from the created world, idolized, and used for their own purpose … the Baals and the Ashteroth, whose worshippers elevated nature, the tribe, the state and the nation to a divine status. God fights against magic and idolatry which, according to Deuteronomy, bend the line between God and his creation. He contends against every form of social injustice and pulls off every cloak under which it seeks to hide.
(2) Yes, because the gods of the ancient world were local deities and therefore ill-equipped, even theoretically, to control the course of history.
It is ironical that Soares-Prabhu should attack Isaiah’s view of Yahweh’s God in the following manner:
Soares-Prabhu goes further in this examination of Isaiah’s polemical text to critically re-assess the kind of monotheism expressed in it. He sees the monotheist position as one of exclusivist, nationalistic and, therefore, inadequate representation of the universal God. “For if Yahweh is truly God, the only God besides whom there is no other, then he must be the God not just of Israel but of all other peoples (of all idol-worshippers!) as well” (Lee, 4).
The irony of Soares-Prabhu’s attack is that Hindu idolatry can hardly be described as universal in a fair-minded, objective manner.
His reaction against Isaiah betrays gross ignorance of Isaiah’s theology and of the way in which it develops prior biblical thought. In particular, Soares-Prabhu has made the mistake of dislocating Isaiah’s polemic from the historical framework which it assumes. Indeed, one of Isaiah’s central points is that Yahweh controls the entire course of history. That history, as the Servant Songs make clear (Isaiah 42:1ff; 49:1ff; 50:4-9; 52:13-53:12) is precisely concerned with the fulfillment of the Abrahamic promises and the extension, through Israel, of justice and the light of truth and salvation to all nations. Consequently, it is a serious misreading of Isaiah to see it as representing an “exclusivist” and “nationalistic” position, even though there is a legitimate stress on the way Yahweh honours his promises to Israel and even though, within the total context of salvation history, Yahweh’s relationship with Israel plays a pivotal role.
(3) Yes, because via prophetic foretelling Yahweh demonstrated that he controlled history, doing that which he promised he would do. Similarly, the fact that the Persian empire overswept these other nations demonstrated the impotence of their gods to deliver their worshipers.
Some References
Trevor Craigen, “Isaiah 40-48: A Sermonic Challenge to Open Theism” in TMSJ 12/2 (Fall 2001) 167-177
Archie C.C. Lee, Naming the Divine in Religious Pluralism: The Challenge of Sharing Hope in a New World. This paper is an updated version of the theme presentation he gave at the Fifth Congress of Asian Theologians in August 2006 in Hong Kong.
Eugene H. Merrill, “Isaiah 40-55 as Anti-Babylonian Polemic” in Grace Theological Journal 8.1 (1987) 3-18
Brian S. Rosner, “The Concept of Idolatry,” Themelios 24.3 (May 1999): 21-30.
Christopher J. H. Wright, “The Christian and other religions: the biblical evidence,” Themelios 9.2 (January 1984) 4-15
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