Isaiah 55 paints a poetic picture of abundance.  It describes a world in which there is, at the end of the day, enough.  There is enough water, there is enough seed to plant and enough bread to eat.  Cypress and myrtle blossom.  Joy and peace become real, no longer the mere abstractions of dreamers.  The word of the Lord accomplishes its purpose.  And the mountains and hills burst into song, singing the praises of the God of Israel.

In its literary and historical context, today’s passage is primarily about offering hope and comfort to those in exile.  When the people of Judah (the Southern part of Israel) were captured and deported by the Babylonians in 586 BCE, they were forced to deal with the harsh reality of life in a strange land.  Not only that, but many had believed that God – their God, the God of Israel – would never let them be conquered or allow the Jerusalem temple to be overrun.  Thus, in the exile, new theological questions arise and the prophets respond with a new message no longer centered on judgment, but on hope.  The shift in tone is dramatic in Isaiah, when in chapter 40 verse 1, the prophet says, “Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.”  Throughout Isaiah 40-55, the prophet highlights God’s continuing sovereignty, power, and holiness, even as the people seem to be suffering and longing for home.  But the prophet’s announcements are not empty wishes or Hallmark-style platitudes; rather, they are profound statements of faith and hope, rooted in the very holiness (i.e. “otherness”) of God.

It is precisely this context – exile, longing, hope – that gives today’s passage its rhetorical power.  God will do, the prophet holds, what God has said that God will do, for God’s word is not void.  Just as we humans cannot control the rain, and yet are dependent on it for our daily bread, so too are we dependent on the un-tame-able word of God.  Here, the image of the mountains bursting into song is particularly poignant.  “Connoting both stability and awe, mountain imagery has a home in the profile of divine protection.  As a conduit between the earthly and the heavenly realms, mountains afforded the ancients an acute awareness of God’s formidable presence and unsurpassed majesty” (Brown, Seeing the Psalms, 201).

Much like the highlands surrounding Jerusalem, the landscape of western North Carolina is dominated by towering mountain peaks and fertile valleys.  For all of our technological innovation, we too remain dependent both on the rain for our daily bread and on the word of God, which sustains us beyond bread alone.  For those of us who live and work in Western North Carolina, these images from Isaiah capture our imagination and continue to give us hope.  We continue to long for that day in which the word of the Lord succeeds in the thing for which God sent it – hope for the hopeless, justice for the oppressed, living wages for the workers, food for the hungry, sustainability instead of pollution, cypress instead of thorn, myrtle instead of brier, new life heralded by the song of the mountains.

BY CHRIS LIU BEERS, PROGRAM ASSOCIATE,

NC COUNCIL OF CHURCHES