Retroactive Stigmata: Isaiah 44.

[John D. Brey]

The word Tiferet is often translated "splendor" or "glory." ----But the root is par, which means "ornament." . . Thus, the addition of two tav, on either side of the word "ornament," creates a word meaning a splendid, glorious, ornament.

The root of all "glory" the "ornament" par -excellent, is the image found between two crosses (two tav). It's the most splendid ornament the world has ever known. It's the most universally recognized ornament that has or ever will be. It really, truly is glorious. . . It's not an exaggeration in the least to say that this one word (Tiferet) is the interpretive key to understanding the whole book of Isaiah: all it's allusions and symbols, etc.. And since Isaiah is the key to the entire Tanakh, what could possibly be more important than that we untangle, un-mangle, the word central to all we hold near and dear to our hearts?

Rabbi Joseph Gikatilla, interprets Isaiah 44:13 in an interesting way:

The TiFERETeT [glory] of a man is to dwell in a Shrine.
Sha'are Orah, p. 225.​

Properly interpreted the entire chapter of Isaiah chapter 44 is a retroactive stigmata. It's perhaps the most fundamental link between the Tanakh and the Gospels found throughout all scripture. It's no exaggeration to suggest that properly interpreted it's more kerygmatic, more powerfully Christological than even Isaiah chapter 53. There well may be no chapter in all the Tanakh so powerfully Christological as Isaiah chapter 44.


John

 

[meghanwaterlillies]

The word Tiferet is often translated "splendor" or "glory." ----But the root is par, which means "ornament." . . Thus, the addition of two tav, on either side of the word "ornament," creates a word meaning a splendid, glorious, ornament.

The root of all "glory" the "ornament" par -excellent, is the image found between two crosses (two tav). It's the most splendid ornament the world has ever known. It's the most universally recognized ornament that has or ever will be. It really, truly is glorious. . . It's not an exaggeration in the least to say that this one word (Tiferet) is the interpretive key to understanding the whole book of Isaiah: all it's allusions and symbols, etc.. And since Isaiah is the key to the entire Tanakh, what could possibly be more important than that we untangle, un-mangle, the word central to all we hold near and dear to our hearts?

Rabbi Joseph Gikatilla, interprets Isaiah 44:13 in an interesting way:

The TiFERETeT [glory] of a man is to dwell in a Shrine.
Sha'are Orah, p. 225.​

Properly interpreted the entire chapter of Isaiah chapter 44 is a retroactive stigmata. It's perhaps the most fundamental link between the Tanakh and the Gospels found throughout all scripture. It's no exaggeration to suggest that properly interpreted it's more kerygmatic, more powerfully Christological than even Isaiah chapter 53. There well may be no chapter in all the Tanakh so powerfully Christological as Isaiah chapter 44.


John

And what about 45. I think its not super at all.

 

[meghanwaterlillies]

I never liked fake potter anyways.

 

[John D. Brey]

And what about 45. I think its not super at all.

Chapter 45? . . . Scripture, particularly the Prophets, is constructed of oracles. Oracles are very cool. They don't function like normal informational content. There's a living relationship (interplay) between the informational content, and the content of the reader's soul. An oracle can say different things to different people.



John

 

[John D. Brey]

I never liked fake potter anyways.

As in Harry Potter?


John

 

[meghanwaterlillies]

Chapter 45? . . . Scripture, particularly the Prophets, is constructed of oracles. Oracles are very cool. They don't function like normal informational content. There's a living relationship (interplay) between the informational content, and the content of the reader's soul. An oracle can say different things to different people.



John

The thing is what makes 44:13 better than the rest and why pull that out only? Why not read it for the whole and what it actually implies.

 

[John D. Brey]

The thing is what makes 44:13 better than the rest and why pull that out only? Why not read it for the whole and what it actually implies.

. . . Would you be interested in sharing what you think it implies?


John

 

[meghanwaterlillies]

. . . Would you be interested in sharing what you think it implies?


John

Of course masonry and the Cyrus "king".

 

[John D. Brey]

Chapter 45? . . . Scripture, particularly the Prophets, is constructed of oracles. Oracles are very cool. They don't function like normal informational content. There's a living relationship (interplay) between the informational content, and the content of the reader's soul. An oracle can say different things to different people.



John

The book of Isaiah is an oracle. Read like a traditional text it's schizophrenic. The biblical scholar Margaret Barker puts it this way:

I have long thought that it is the Second Isaiah who holds the key to our understanding of the Old Testament. So much is crammed into these chapters, so many layers are apparent, so many images fused and re-fused that the mind behind them must have been a religious genius. Unfortunately, such genius is as disturbing as it is liberating, and the needs of ordinary mortals, and of the religious institutions which offer them order and security, can only be met by less exotic stuff.

The Older Testament, p. 161.
​

John

 

[John D. Brey]

>>The book of Isaiah is an oracle. Read like a traditional text it's schizophrenic<<

That's because Isaiah was mentally ill and may have even been schizophrenic. There is also the possibility that he suffered from the latter stages of syphilis.

It is not schizophrenia but normality that is split-minded; in schizophrenia the false boundaries are dis-integrating. "From pathology we have come to know a large number of states in which the boundary lines between ego and outside world become uncertain [Freud]." Schizophrenics are suffering from the truth.

. . . The schizophrenic world is one of mystical participation; an "indescribable extension of inner sense"; "uncanny feelings of reference"; occult psychosomatic influences and powers; currents of electricity" . . . "The patient connects herself with everybody." "You and I, are we not the same? . . . Sometimes I cannot tell myself from other people. . . . it seemed to me as though I were one with the all."

Professor Norman O. Brown, Love's Body, p. 159-160.
​

In answer to Professor Brown, Professor V.S. Ramachandran, Ph,D, suggests, in Phantom's in the Brain, that schizophrenia has a clear relationship with the sort of "genius" Professor Barker links to Isaiah. -----According to Professor Ramachandran:

On what basis does one decide whether a mystical experience [associated with schizophrenia or epileptic seizure] is normal or abnormal? There is a common tendency to equate "unusual" or "rare" with abnormal, but this is a logical fallacy. Genius is rare but highly valued trait, whereas tooth decay is common but obviously undesirable. Which one of these categories does mystical experience fall into? Why is the revealed truth of such transcendent experience in any way "inferior" to the more mundane truths that we scientists dabble in?
​

Isaiah is the perfect storm of genius and schizophrenia. In his preternatural schizophrenic-trances he was able to connect various loose threads of biblical symbolism into the clearest tapestry of what the Tanakh is all about that any human being, exempting Saul of Tarsus, has ever produced. Since chapter 44 of Isaiah's revelation is the foundation of everything else found in the book, it's extremely unfortunate that exegetes attempt to interpret schizophrenic-utterance using a demotic, or traditional approach, to how meaning is extracted from a written text. That approach is worthless when addressing or undressing Isaiah's text. To get to the most important meaning in Isaiah (chapter 44) it does no good to read the text as we would read the morning paper. We've got to be capable of using an exegesis able to enter into the tapestry still disunified by the biases of the ego and the scientific, rational, part of human understanding:

Meaning is made in a meeting between the holy spirit buried in the Christian and the holy spirit buried underneath the letter of scripture; a breakthrough, from the Abgrund, from the unconscious of the reader past the conscious intention of the author to the unconscious meaning; breaking the barrier of the ego and the barrier of the book.

Love’s Body, p. 196.
​

You can't read Isaiah as he intended himself to be read unless you sleep in the same bed. You've have to have a tinge of schizophrenia yourself? You have to be at least a bit touched . . . by the same Spirit as Isaiah:

You open the prophets and your eyes are able to see nothing but the letters. But what can the letters say? They are the black bars of the prison where the spirit strangles itself with screaming. Between the letter and the lines, and all around the blank margins, the spirit circulates freely; and I circulate with it and bring you this great message.

Kazantzakis, The Last Temptation of Christ, 101-102.​

John

 

[John D. Brey]

A shoot--- This is symbolic of the royal scepter [Rashi]. The shoot alludes to the King Messiah, as Jonathan paraphrases. He will spring forth from the stem, or stump, of Jesse. When a tree is cut down, only the stump remains, and twigs spring up around it [Redak].
​

Rashi says the Shoot is the royal scepter (and he calls it Messiah elsewhere).----- Redak says it's a basal-shoot such as the ones that sprout up (break through the soil) when a sexually reproducing tree is cut down to the stump such that sexual reproduction is no longer possible. ----Then, "twigs" (basal-shoots) must sprout from the root beneath the stump, as clonal facsimiles (genetic clones) members of a genet, rather than as products of the sexual tree which is no longer able to reproduce in the sexual way.

The previous verses (Isaiah 10:33-34) tell us why there's a stump in the first place:

Behold, the Lord, the LORD of hosts, shall lop off the tree to the stump with force: and the high ones of stature shall be hewn down, and the haughty shall be humbled. 34 And he shall cut down the thickets of the forest with iron, and Lebanon shall fall by a mighty one.
​

The Sages know "Lebanon" refers to the holy temple. So the last statement in Isaiah chapter 10 is part and parcel of Rashi's not wanting to make the "Sprout" in Zechariah 6:12 speak of Messiah, though he concedes the context suggests it, and most Sages demand it.

Why doesn't Rashi want "Sprout" (found at Zech. 6:12) to speak of Messiah? ---- Because, as he correctly points out, the context is the time of the second temple. How can the "Sprout" be messianic, be Messiah, when the second temple (Lebanon) is going to fall down at the hands of the mighty ones, the Romans?

Confounding Rashi's dilemma Isaiah 11:1 tells us, and just a verse after Lebanon is cut down to a stump, that a basal-Shoot will indeed come up after the tree is cut down to the stump. See why Rashi fights the idea that Zechariah's "Sprout" is Messiah? Because in that case Messiah must come during the second temple, when, as best any Jew can tell, that didn't happen?

The latter part of Isaiah chapter 10 (verses 33-34) prophesy the destruction of the Jerusalem temple. It prophesies it in a manner that reveals the spirit and sense of Isaiah chapter 11, since chapter 10 speaks of the Jerusalem temple as a giant "Lebanon" (a Tree).

Behold the Master, the Lord of Hosts lops off the branches with a saw, and those of lofty height are hewn down, and the tall one shall be humbled. And the thickets of the forests shall be cut off with iron, and the Lebanon shall fall through a mighty one.​

After the Lebanon (Jerusalem temple) is hewn to the ground (Isa. 10:34), we read in the very next verse that a basal-Shoot will rise up out of the roots. The forsaken "forest" associated with the former Jerusalem temple, i.e., all those born of the natural sexual propagation method, shall be cut down by "iron" (which "iron" is a biblical symbol of Rome). A new forest will then rise up out of the root of the former temple that was razed to the ground.

The new forest will be a genet, a clonal colony, reproducing not by sexual means, per the former forest razed to the ground, but through a cloning method that dispenses with sexual reproduction.

The shoot alludes to the King Messiah, as Jonathan paraphrases. He will spring forth from the stem, or stump . . . [For] when a tree is cut down, only the stump remains, and twigs spring up around it. . . The prophet, therefore, announces that there is still hope for the House of David, and that from its roots and its stump, a new shoot will spring, a new king over Israel [Redak].
​

Redak points out that the destruction of the Jerusalem temple isn't the end of the story. In many ways it's just the beginning. He focuses our attention on the exegetical nature of the "stump," the "root," and the "shoot."

The "stump" is the razing of the tree to the ground (botanical coppicing, which is directly associated with circumcision in Jewish thought). The "root" (as opposed to the "stump") is the part of the tree capable of producing a clone of itself (twigs sprout up asexually from the root) even though the the stump (the part of the tree associated with sexual reproduction) has been circumcised thus rendering sexual-reproduction impossible.

The prophet Isaiah obsesses over the transference of the former sexual reproduction of the forest into a form of botanical-reproduction mirroring brit milah (i.e., coppicing to form a clone of the root, and thereafter a clonal colony) rather than the natural and sexually diverse forest formerly produced when the tree (temple) was intact.

The fact that Isaiah chapter 11 associates the Sprout, i.e., the basal-shoot growing out of the roots of the Jerusalem temple (destroyed by the Romans) with Messiah, King Messiah (Redak), not only segues with any number of passages of scripture, but also directs the spirit of this entire thread into the dark waters predicted when the thread had only just begun.


John

 

[John D. Brey]

So and so said...

The stump of the tree is not the part of the tree associated with sexual reproduction.

The suggestion that it is, well, let's say it's not showing a clear understanding of the topic at hand.

. . . Sorry. I got the verbiage mixed up. Thanks for catching that. What I meant to imply was that the "trunk" (not the "stump") is the part of the tree from which its sexual reproductive abilities arise.

When you cut the trunk down to the ground, creating a "stump," that stump represents the end of that particular tree's sexual life. The "twigs" that sprout up out of the remaining root are clones of the original tree and not sexually produced offspring.

Coppicing is botanical brit milah. The root (not the trunk and its branches) is used to produce a clone of the original organism rather than using the still intact trunk and branches to produce sexual seed through which a particular kind of forest grows from sexual reproduction.

A "genet" is a forest, or colony, whereby every tree or organism in the community is produced from one root. Every single organism in the community shares the exact same DNA since they're all produced asexually rather than sexually.

That's what the last few verses in Isaiah chapter ten, and the first verses in chapter eleven are getting at: the Jerusalem temple is the original tree through which one family of Israel is produced. The temple represents the source of the forest known as the "Children of Israel." They're produced from the seeds produced by the trunk, and branches, of the mighty Lebanon.

But when that temple (Lebanon) is razed to the ground, along with the forest come from it, i.e., the Children of Israel (both are razed to the ground by the Romans) then the root of the temple is all that's left.

A new organism rises out of the root of the Jerusalem temple. This new organism isn't like the Children of Israel who use normal sexual reproduction as the source of their communal unity. The new organism is a genet. Every member is a clone of the root of the original tree. No member is produced through sexual reproduction. Every member of the new community grows out of the root, and not the trunk (which is now a stump) of the Jerusalem temple.


John

 

[John D. Brey]

>> In natural propagation, the root has no part in the reproductive process. The trunk and branches produce the seed that's cross fertilized by other trees producing the variation in the species.<<

>Not the trunks and branches, but the flowers or cones. Seeds don't grow on trunks or branches.<

. . . Flowers and cones grow on trunks and branches, no? And trunks and branches grow out of roots, no? -----Rashi said the sign of the original sin was that the fruit no longer tasted like the tree. . . So surely you see what he's getting at?

If an asexual sprout grows out of the root, it produces a clone of the root. Until sexual propagation produces variation, the cones, flowers, seeds, are all the same stuff as the root. If there's no cross-breeding, there's no mixing or variation.

If an organism is a genet, if every individual in the colony is a clone produced from the original root, then they all taste the same. There's no mechanism for the sort of variation Rashi connects to the original sin (of eating variegated fruit).

So what if the original sin was sex? What if humanity was originally designed to be a genet, a clonal-colony, where we all shared the exact same DNA as pre-lapse Adam? What if sex was an aberration, an abomination, a branching out and away from the original design?

Through Milah it would be possible to return to the level of Adam and Eve before the sin. In other words, mankind would again have direct access to the spiritual dimension. . . circumcision restored Abraham and his descendants to the status of Adam before his sin. . . If not for Adam's sin, all mankind would have had the status of Israel.

Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, Inner Space, p. 166; The Handbook of Jewish Thought, p.47; The Handbook of Jewish Thought, p. 39.
​

Rabbi Kaplan is patently and explicitly declaring that if not for Adam's sin all of mankind would be a genet, a clonal-colony, produced without the offending branch, the ritual removal of which is the sign of that spiritual community, that colony of like individuals, called "Israel."

If not for Adam's sin all mankind would be a genet (clonal-colony) called "Israel." -----We'd all be clones of one another, brothers and sisters in the most intimate and literal way. We'd be literally correct to call each other "brother" Mike, or "sister" Shoshana. It wouldn't be a religious formality or ritualistic technique but a biological reality.

And what's the religious formality associated with returning mankind to what was originally supposed to be (i.e., a human genet, "brother" Mel, "sister" Metpatpetet)?. . . The symbolic removal of the offending branch grafted on to the stump to cause variation through cross-breeding, "circumcision restored Abraham and his descendants to the status of Adam before his sin."

Graftings of trees and matings of animals in the sense of the kolim-law [law not to mix unlike things] would constitute a wanton interference by man with the God-given laws of nature.

R. Hirsch, Collected Writings, p. 174.
​

Who produced the wanton interference with Adam's God-given body that allowed him to urinate and procreate like an animal? -----Who tinkered with Adam's God-given design in a manner that allowed him to cause genetic variation (and thus gross division) within the human race such that the first product of this variation and division is the paragon of this brilliant re-engineering of God's original design known as the murderer Cain?

Cast your gaze back to a Jewish prophet who said you had to eat his flesh and drink his blood in order to enter into God's original design. There was this ragged Jewish dude who said if you didn't eat his flesh you couldn't be a member of a spiritual colony where everyone was literally "brother" Loren, and "sister" Sarah. Two former mules could become "brother" so-and-so and "sister" Sarah.

And by what right did this Jewish fella arrogantly suppose that by eating his flesh one could enter into a clonal-colony forming the Kingdom of God on earth ("Israel"), i.e., could become God's literal sons and daughters ("Israel")?

Well he was born from the unfertilized root of the human race, the female ovum post-meiosis pre-fertilization. He was the first biological, asexual, basal-Shoot, literally growing out of the untained (by sexual variation) root of the original human being (prelapse Adam). He's the first human being whose fruit tastes identical to the root: prelapse Adam.

If sexual variation and division is the original sin, then Adam's prelapse Son, slated to be born prior to the lapse, would signify his unique identity to his brothers and sisters precisely by means of his conception. He would be the first human being born apart from the act that caused the variation and division in the first place, which first place is Genesis 2:21-3:6, and whose firstborn is Cain.

This Jew is the firstborn of a whole other creation known as "Israel," a clonal-colony of like-minded and identical spiritual creatures who make up the Kingdom of God on earth.

I've been sent here to recruit for this Kingdom. I'm an authorized recruiter. I've been given the authority to baptize any and all, sinner or presumed saint, into the blood of the firstborn of prelapse creation. If his blood isn't on you and or in you on Judgement day my *** is grass. I can't get my wings until I can convince one and all to ring each other's bell without a single ding-a-ling.


John

 

[John D. Brey]

John Brey said...
Messiah will rise out of the stump of Lebanon. Who can deny that? And he will rise not as natural offspring like the members of the forest destroyed by the Romans, but as a basal-shoot, an asexual clone of the original root of the Lebanon.

It's not until we use Ezekiel 7 to interpret Deutero-Isaiah that we encounters dark things. Things hidden deep in the vaults and catacombs of Judaism and Christianity since the first century; things that cut to the very heart of the differences that separate modern Jewish and Christian sensibilities, things hidden deep beneath the veils Isaiah used to layer Isaiah chapter 44 so that nothing shall escape until the time is ripe.

In what seems like a similar spirit to the one that produced the two paragraphs above, Martin Buber addresses the same terrible ironies that are at the very heart of this thread; the distinctions and disturbances that form a barrier between Christianity and Judaism.

And perhaps it isn't surprising that Buber would be moved by the same or similar spirit since it wouldn't be incorrect to point out that Buber thoughtfully approached Christian teaching from the foundation of Judaism even as the author above thoughtfully approaches Judaism from the foundation of Christianity.

Wouldn't it be something if a Christian pursuing Judaism from the foundation of Christianity met in the middle of the night with a Jew pursuing Christianity from the foundation of Judaism . . . and thereby gave birth to a meaningful move toward uncovering dark and terrible secrets wrapped suffocatingly around the very root from which both faiths spring:

Without being asked, Isaiah submits himself as an emissary and he is sent. The mission which he now accepts is the most terrible thing in the whole vision. The duty which is laid upon him is this: to say "to this people" that they may listen but will understand nothing, and that they may see but will know nothing.
​

And here Buber goes to the heart of the issue:

This is a very strange command. Not because YHVH wishes to harden the people's heart, though this perplexes us; but because evidently the prophet has to achieve this aim through the words God will put in his mouth [his prophesy]. He is not to deceive his hearers with lying promises . . . but he is to hand on the true saying of God. And so if we here consider every word with such seriousness as is right and proper, we cannot avoid the question as to what prophesy is fitted to act so---in other words, what prophecy of this kind we find in the extant sayings of Isaiah.
​

Buber is asking the question at the heart of this thread? What is the nature of the prophesies of Deutero-Isaiah (with chapter 44 at the center) such that by means of a true prophesy Israel's spiritual perception of God is made dull?

We stand here on the threshold of Isaiah's testimony---and on the threshold of the tragic contradiction in his prophetic way. Will he hold out the message of salvation to the people as poison?
​

Isaiah is being made to give a true prophesy, the truest in the Tanakh, but in a manner that will utterly turn Israel in the other direction. He's to give a true prophesy that will be niddah for Israel. He's utterly justifying the name of this thread by using Israel's most natural and healthy disposition, contra-idolatry, in order to "make the ears of the multitude heavy and to becloud their eyes" (Buber).

Isaiah blinds Israel from salvation, yesha, by sanctifying, kashering, the shiniest idol the world has ever or will ever know. -----He presents a sanctified-idol as the salvation --yesha-- of the world, thereby cutting Israel off from the very source of universal salvation.

He holds out the message of salvation, yesha, as poison, as the worst idolatry the world has ever known, thereby cutting Israel out of the very covenant established through Abraham.

The Gentiles who are unclean because of their natural disposition toward idolatry are saved by Isaiah's idol, while Israel, who is clean so far as idolatry is concerned, is left out in the cold harsh world to suffer and be made enemies of the universal salvation.

In so-doing Isaiah turns the very foundation of the covenant, the ritual beginning of the covenant, into a divine/demonic emblem that pictures the very nature of the conception of the sanctified-idol (through which universal peace and salvation will come) as intertwined with the serpentine desire, the evil-inclination, that would think even for a moment to cut Israel out of the very covenant established for her.

God's prophesy to Isaiah turns brit milah into Nehushtan thereby turning the profane nature of idolatry on its head ("Nehustan Saves!") and thereby giving Isaiah the seminal key through which he further elucidates, expands, and expounds on the greatest prophesy found anywhere in the Bible.

Buber intuits the existential horror Isaiah experiences when he learns that salvation, Yeshua, would be conceived in a manner pictured in the formation of Israel, brit milah, but that Israel would use her deepest instinct against idolatry to reject the Savior who came firstly, and will come again in the last days, specifically because of his deep love for her.


John

 

[John D. Brey]

In what seems like a similar spirit to the one that produced the two paragraphs above, Martin Buber addresses the same terrible ironies that are at the very heart of this thread; the distinctions and disturbances that form a barrier between Christianity and Judaism.

And perhaps it isn't surprising that Buber would be moved by the same or similar spirit since it wouldn't be incorrect to point out that Buber thoughtfully approached Christian teaching from the foundation of Judaism even as the author above thoughtfully approaches Judaism from the foundation of Christianity.

Wouldn't it be something if a Christian pursuing Judaism from the foundation of Christianity met in the middle of the night with a Jew pursuing Christianity from the foundation of Judaism . . . and thereby gave birth to a meaningful move toward uncovering dark and terrible secrets wrapped suffocatingly around the very root from which both faiths spring:

Without being asked, Isaiah submits himself as an emissary and he is sent. The mission which he now accepts is the most terrible thing in the whole vision. The duty which is laid upon him is this: to say "to this people" that they may listen but will understand nothing, and that they may see but will know nothing.
​

And here Buber goes to the heart of the issue:

This is a very strange command. Not because YHVH wishes to harden the people's heart, though this perplexes us; but because evidently the prophet has to achieve this aim through the words God will put in his mouth [his prophesy]. He is not to deceive his hearers with lying promises . . . but he is to hand on the true saying of God. And so if we here consider every word with such seriousness as is right and proper, we cannot avoid the question as to what prophesy is fitted to act so---in other words, what prophecy of this kind we find in the extant sayings of Isaiah.
​

Buber is asking the question at the heart of this thread? What is the nature of the prophesies of Deutero-Isaiah (with chapter 44 at the center) such that by means of a true prophesy Israel's spiritual perception of God is made dull?

We stand here on the threshold of Isaiah's testimony---and on the threshold of the tragic contradiction in his prophetic way. Will he hold out the message of salvation to the people as poison?
​

Isaiah is being made to give a true prophesy, the truest in the Tanakh, but in a manner that will utterly turn Israel in the other direction. He's to give a true prophesy that will be niddah for Israel. He's utterly justifying the name of this thread by using Israel's most natural and healthy disposition, contra-idolatry, in order to "make the ears of the multitude heavy and to becloud their eyes" (Buber).

Isaiah blinds Israel from salvation, yesha, by sanctifying, kashering, the shiniest idol the world has ever or will ever know. -----He presents a sanctified-idol as the salvation --yesha-- of the world, thereby cutting Israel off from the very source of universal salvation.

He holds out the message of salvation, yesha, as poison, as the worst idolatry the world has ever known, thereby cutting Israel out of the very covenant established through Abraham.

The Gentiles who are unclean because of their natural disposition toward idolatry are saved by Isaiah's idol, while Israel, who is clean so far as idolatry is concerned, is left out in the cold harsh world to suffer and be made enemies of the universal salvation.

In so-doing Isaiah turns the very foundation of the covenant, the ritual beginning of the covenant, into a divine/demonic emblem that pictures the very nature of the conception of the sanctified-idol (through which universal peace and salvation will come) as intertwined with the serpentine desire, the evil-inclination, that would think even for a moment to cut Israel out of the very covenant established for her.

God's prophesy to Isaiah turns brit milah into Nehushtan thereby turning the profane nature of idolatry on its head ("Nehustan Saves!") and thereby giving Isaiah the seminal key through which he further elucidates, expands, and expounds on the greatest prophesy found anywhere in the Bible.

Buber intuits the existential horror Isaiah experiences when he learns that salvation, Yeshua, would be conceived in a manner pictured in the formation of Israel, brit milah, but that Israel would use her deepest instinct against idolatry to reject the Savior who came firstly, and will come again in the last days, specifically because of his deep love for her.


John

One of the passages of scripture central to the thesis of this entire thread is Ezekiel 7:20 (and the contextual verses around it). -----Commenting on this particular verse Abarbanel says: "Therefore, God says, I made it as a niddah, a menstruant, who is unclean and from whom people distance themselves [Isa. 53:3]":

And the beauty of His adornment is what he made for their pride, but they made there the despicable images of their abominations; therefore I made it repugnant [niddah] to them.
​

This adornment, this ornament, is the key to the entire Tanakh. It's symbolized by the mezuzah, the tefillin, the tallit (specifically the tzizit on the tallit). . . Sniffing around for the same scriptural truffles associated with this thread, Rabbi Hirsch says (Num. 15:41):

The question still remains, however, as to the connection between the means, which the Torah has chosen, and the idea that it calls to mind. First of all, it seems to us that the tzitzis on our garments, the milah on our bodies, the tefillin on arm and forehead, and the mezuzah on our homes have a common denominator.
​

The denominator common to all the aforementioned is that they're all "ornaments" given to Israel for their pride. They all represent God as a garment, ornament, symbol of great pride, worn by Israel.------In one manner or other every one of these symbolic ornaments represents God in his singular most revealing manifestation; they all represent the Name most telling and revealing of the true nature of God wherever found throughout the Tanakh: "Shaddai"; shin-dalet-yod.

Rabbi Samson Hirsch ties the Name "Shaddai" directly to milah, thetefillin, and the mezuzah (although the tallit and zitzit are more nuanced).

When Ezekiel 7:20 relates that the beautiful adornment God gave Israel is made niddah, unclean, he's signifying something existentially terrifying: the God, associated with the Name "Shaddai" is going to be made "niddah," unclean, for Israel.

Rabbi Munk, and Rabbi Mendel Schneerson (among others of course), point out the strange interpretation of the Hebrew text at Numbers 19:2 which states that Parah Adumah is the "Decree of the decrees." They say it's the Chok of the chukkim. After which they elucidate that it's potentially the key to understanding all the other decrees in the Torah.

Milah, tefillin, mezuzah and zitzit are "decrees" of the Torah. They're all related directly to the Decree of the decrees: Parah Adumah.

Parah Adumah produces an elixir as strange as the topic being discussed in this thread. It produces the sanctifying brew called, get this, "Waters of Niddah." --------Guess what these Waters of Niddah do? ----They make the unclean clean, and the clean unclean.

But this is just what Isaiah and Ezekiel prophesy is going to happen to the "ornaments" given to Israel as the source of their connection with God (specifically the God Named "Shaddai"): they're all going to becomeniddah for the clean, Israel, and become the source of the ultimate sacerdotal pride for the uncircumcised Gentiles, who are now clean in Gods eyes whenever "Shaddai" suckles from their breast as the mark of God, the yod, nestled like a leprous unclean lamb between the Gentile'sshaddim (Isaiah 60:16).



John

 

[John D. Brey]

In what seems like a similar spirit to the one that produced the two paragraphs above, Martin Buber addresses the same terrible ironies that are at the very heart of this thread; the distinctions and disturbances that form a barrier between Christianity and Judaism.

And perhaps it isn't surprising that Buber would be moved by the same or similar spirit since it wouldn't be incorrect to point out that Buber thoughtfully approached Christian teaching from the foundation of Judaism even as the author above thoughtfully approaches Judaism from the foundation of Christianity.

Wouldn't it be something if a Christian pursuing Judaism from the foundation of Christianity met in the middle of the night with a Jew pursuing Christianity from the foundation of Judaism . . . and thereby gave birth to a meaningful move toward uncovering dark and terrible secrets wrapped suffocatingly around the very root from which both faiths spring:

Without being asked, Isaiah submits himself as an emissary and he is sent. The mission which he now accepts is the most terrible thing in the whole vision. The duty which is laid upon him is this: to say "to this people" that they may listen but will understand nothing, and that they may see but will know nothing.
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And here Buber goes to the heart of the issue:

This is a very strange command. Not because YHVH wishes to harden the people's heart, though this perplexes us; but because evidently the prophet has to achieve this aim through the words God will put in his mouth [his prophesy]. He is not to deceive his hearers with lying promises . . . but he is to hand on the true saying of God. And so if we here consider every word with such seriousness as is right and proper, we cannot avoid the question as to what prophesy is fitted to act so---in other words, what prophecy of this kind we find in the extant sayings of Isaiah.
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Buber is asking the question at the heart of this thread? What is the nature of the prophesies of Deutero-Isaiah (with chapter 44 at the center) such that by means of a true prophesy Israel's spiritual perception of God is made dull?

We stand here on the threshold of Isaiah's testimony---and on the threshold of the tragic contradiction in his prophetic way. Will he hold out the message of salvation to the people as poison?
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Isaiah is being made to give a true prophesy, the truest in the Tanakh, but in a manner that will utterly turn Israel in the other direction. He's to give a true prophesy that will be niddah for Israel. He's utterly justifying the name of this thread by using Israel's most natural and healthy disposition, contra-idolatry, in order to "make the ears of the multitude heavy and to becloud their eyes" (Buber).

Isaiah blinds Israel from salvation, yesha, by sanctifying, kashering, the shiniest idol the world has ever or will ever know. -----He presents a sanctified-idol as the salvation --yesha-- of the world, thereby cutting Israel off from the very source of universal salvation.

He holds out the message of salvation, yesha, as poison, as the worst idolatry the world has ever known, thereby cutting Israel out of the very covenant established through Abraham.

The Gentiles who are unclean because of their natural disposition toward idolatry are saved by Isaiah's idol, while Israel, who is clean so far as idolatry is concerned, is left out in the cold harsh world to suffer and be made enemies of the universal salvation.

In so-doing Isaiah turns the very foundation of the covenant, the ritual beginning of the covenant, into a divine/demonic emblem that pictures the very nature of the conception of the sanctified-idol (through which universal peace and salvation will come) as intertwined with the serpentine desire, the evil-inclination, that would think even for a moment to cut Israel out of the very covenant established for her.

God's prophesy to Isaiah turns brit milah into Nehushtan thereby turning the profane nature of idolatry on its head ("Nehustan Saves!") and thereby giving Isaiah the seminal key through which he further elucidates, expands, and expounds on the greatest prophesy found anywhere in the Bible.

Buber intuits the existential horror Isaiah experiences when he learns that salvation, Yeshua, would be conceived in a manner pictured in the formation of Israel, brit milah, but that Israel would use her deepest instinct against idolatry to reject the Savior who came firstly, and will come again in the last days, specifically because of his deep love for her.


John

We stand here on the threshold of Isaiah's testimony---and on the threshold of the tragic contradiction in his prophetic way. Will he hold out the message of salvation to the people as poison?

Buber, The Prophetic Faith, p. 132.
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Will he make yesha, Salvation, niddah? ------ And not a paragraph away Buber cuts to the chase that is this thread: "`Lord, until when?' The meaning of this `until when?' can only be, to what time, until what term does this awful task hold? (Ibid.)" ----- Until the land be wasted, and the people reduced to less than a tenth of the land. Buber then segues immediately into the meat of what's been argued throughout this thread (Ibid. p. 133):

What Isaiah declares at the end of his vision as God's will means: then, when the people is decimated and the land again given over to pasturage, will take place what sometimes happens when a tree is felled; a stump is left in the ground, and after a while a branch comes out of the stump, and from it springs a new tree. This new branch Isaiah calls here---as the "remnant" is designated holy in 4, 3---by the name "seed of hallowing."

This is no more the natural propagation and maintenance of the people . . . the "seed of hallowing" here is a particular kind of propagation of the people, set apart in the personal, removing and preserving interference of God, a kind of propagation that conducts the people through death to life, and now the regenerated people is hallowed. [Emphasis mine.]
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The last statement of Buber is nothing less than a Jewish way of saying the people are "born-again." ------The former branch, propagated through the normal means, dies, and a new branch, the remnant, grow out of the skeleton, the roots, of the old man.

Mind you this "new branch," this remnant grown out of the death of the old Israel, out of its root (stump), is being used by Buber to explain the precise time when Isaiah's prophesy, formerly made niddah, poison, unclean, unacceptable to Israel (except through the utter elimination of all it says clearly, see 53), will finally be understandable to the "remnant" who, and we must emphasize this, will grow out of the stump of Israel by a new and peculiar form of propagation perfectly rendered, symbolically, by the decree through which the people were original set apart for God.

This is not the former means of propagation, shared with the Gentiles, but precisely, and Buber merely repeats whats been said throughout this thread, by means of an asexual propagation whereby a new tree grows out of the former branch udderly ignoring the sexual means of propagation that will be cut to the ground before this new birth, this regenerative new growth,"conducts the people through death to life." ------They're "born-again" through death to the former procreative branch in order that those who are re-born in this new Way can look back at Isaiah and see what was hidden to those who weren't part of the remnant according to grace.

What was poison to Israel from Sinai to Golgotha, the revelation of Shaddai's true nature and purpose in Salvation, Yeshua (El Chay, the Living God), is made clean to all those who pass through death into the new life that "sprouts" from the stump formerly crowned for Israel's glory and pride.


John

 

[Magus]

Why is King Cyrus completely ignored , even though he is the central figure in Deutero Isaiah ( 40-55 ) .

Isaiah 44:28
That saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure: even saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built; and to the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid.
Isaiah 45:1
Thus saith Jehovah to his Messiah, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him

Cyrus was the Shepherd, Messiah and the Savior who freed the captives, toppled Babylon and decreed the building of the temple.

Isaiah 44:27 ( Cyrus dries up the River Euphrates, confirmed in Herodotus )
That saith to the deep, Be dry, and I will dry up thy rivers:

Revelation 16:12 ( Cyrus-Christ ) .
And the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river Euphrates; and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared.

This drying of the Euphrates, inspired the parting of the Red Sea ( Yam Suph ), This is why Second-Isaiah is the key to understanding the Old Testament, The Torah is Persian history told in mythical form.

 

[John D. Brey]

Why is King Cyrus completely ignored , even though he is the central figure in Deutero Isaiah ( 40-55 ) .

Isaiah 44:28
That saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure: even saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built; and to the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid.
Isaiah 45:1
Thus saith Jehovah to his Messiah, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him

Cyrus was the Shepherd, Messiah and the Savior who freed the captives, toppled Babylon and decreed the building of the temple.

Isaiah 44:27 ( Cyrus dries up the River Euphrates, confirmed in Herodotus )
That saith to the deep, Be dry, and I will dry up thy rivers:

Revelation 16:12 ( Cyrus-Christ ) .
And the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river Euphrates; and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared.

This drying of the Euphrates, inspired the parting of the Red Sea ( Yam Suph ), This is why Second-Isaiah is the key to understanding the Old Testament, The Torah is Persian history told in mythical form.

Cyrus came after the parting of the Red Sea?



John

 

[Magus]

Cyrus came after the parting of the Red Sea?

John

What is the difference between 'Parting' and 'Drying' ?

Joshua 2:10
For we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red sea for you.

Red Sea is a translation from the Septuagint, but in the Hebrew, it is 'Yam Suph' translating Marsh-Sea or Western Marsh.

 

[John D. Brey]

What is the difference between 'Parting' and 'Drying' ?

Joshua 2:10
For we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red sea for you.

Red Sea is a translation from the Septuagint, but in the Hebrew, it is 'Yam Suph' translating Marsh-Sea or Western Marsh.

Parting and drying can be the same. I was just pointing out that Cyrus came after the parting/drying of the Red Sea.

In Isaiah there are constant double-entendre. Cyrus is a type of Messiah. Hezekiah is a type of Messiah. And most important of all, so far as understanding Deutero-Isaiah, Nehushtan is a type of Messiah. The latter statement could be considered the portal into understanding the deepest strata of Deutero-Isaiah.



John