NOTES for Isa 12:1-2

The shoot from the root of Jesse, Christ, comes for the salvation of all humanity. The Consolation of Israel is given for all, says the Lord. The prophet Isaiah proclaims today that Christ will become a banner for the peoples and that the nations will turn to Him.

The prophet sings a majestic hymn to the deliverance that the Lord gives. In this deliverance there is a place for all: for Judah and Ephraim, and for all the Gentiles. God's plan is to save the remnant of Israel and through this draw all nations to salvation. "...God is my salvation," the prophet says on behalf of all peoples, "I will trust in Him and will not be afraid." Everything said about the remnant of Israel belongs to His judgment, God's judgment.

But where would all of us be if He, in His mercy, had not opened this trust to us as well? Therefore this is not only the hymn of an ancient Hebrew prophet, but ours too.

Once again the prophet Isaiah proclaims a word of hope to us. He announces the Lord's word that Christ—the shoot from the root of Jesse—will become a banner for the peoples, and the Gentiles will turn to Him. The prophet sings a majestic hymn to the deliverance the Lord grants. In this deliverance there is room for everyone: for Judah and Ephraim, and for all the Gentiles. God's purpose is to save the remnant of Israel and thereby draw all peoples to salvation. “God is my salvation,” says the prophet on behalf of all peoples; “I will trust in Him and not be afraid.” Everything said about the remnant of Israel is His judgment, God's judgment. But where would any of us be if, in His mercy, He had not opened this hope to us as well? Therefore, this is not only the hymn of an ancient Hebrew prophet, but ours too.

For the prophet Isaiah "that day" is the day of the Lord, when God will manifest His presence and His power. The day, in which man turns out to be face to face with God, unless he hides from Him. But indeed, such a day has already come for us! God has fulfilled salvation through the Son, Who is with us every day, He sent the Comforter, Spirit filling our hearts of fearlessness, strength and song of praise. So, for us every day is the day of the Lord, and today also. Don’t we try to hide?

What can a righteous person do? And what is righteousness worth? On the one hand, he can do little, almost nothing. In any case, Noah is not able to stop the flood; events take their course. He was, of course, able to build the ark, but without God's direct instruction it would not have occurred to him, just as nothing of the kind occurred to his contemporaries.

On the other hand, it is precisely through Noah and his ark that the world is saved. This is not about the former world, which is passing away forever, but about a new world whose history will begin after the flood. This is probably the task of the righteous and the role of righteousness. No righteous person can prevent a catastrophe produced by human sinfulness; that is simply beyond human power. But a righteous person can give a chance at new life to those who trust him and follow him, a chance that certainly does not guarantee that the new world will become ideal, but at least guarantees everyone who has to live in it the possibility of making one more attempt to live life as God commands.

This chance, however, is not something the righteous person gives on his own, but together with God. Strictly speaking, it is God who gives the world another chance through the righteous person, using human righteousness as an instrument for achieving His purposes. Of course, He could have done everything Himself. But He created the human person so that the human person would become His helper. And He takes this absolutely seriously. Therefore, even to save the world, He needs at least one righteous person. More would be better, of course. But less than one will not do.

The words about God, who will not let the righteous go hungry and will take away what the wicked has accumulated, can be understood in different ways. Among other things, precisely this kind of aphorism has more than once led thinking Christians not only to the question of social justice, but also to suppositions about the need for a radical redistribution of property, and by violent means.

Reading the rebukes of the prophets, it is not hard to see that they too spoke for social justice, though they trusted not in revolution but in society's return to the Torah, to its norms and values. Yet the aphorism quoted here is not limited to social questions alone, since the problem of wealth and poverty has two sides.

On the one hand, it really must be discussed as a social problem, the problem of a just distribution of public income, and the Torah offers quite definite mechanisms for redistributing that income in favor of the poor. In modern language, a state founded on the Torah would be a social state.

But this question has another side as well, connected with one's attitude to property, to wealth or poverty, and in general to one's own life. It is enough to recall the story once mentioned in the press of the suicide of a millionaire who wrote in his farewell note that he could not live decently on the two million of annual income left to him.

Apparently the main problems begin when a person starts determining for himself how much he will need "for happiness." And the main problem usually turns out to be that a definite sum which had seemed sufficient sooner or later, and usually sooner, always becomes too little. The root of all these problems is connected with the fact that fallen man is accustomed to determine for himself the meaning, goals, form, and content of his own life.

The path of righteousness excludes such self-determination: in this case a person no longer belongs to himself. God determines how and for what he is to live, and the chief meaning of life becomes the person's acceptance of God's determination. The level of annual income turns out to be only one of the determinations, and not the most important one, though it is significant. Otherwise the Torah would not give so much attention to questions of social justice and the redistribution of public wealth in favor of the poor.

In the end everything comes down to the Savior's words, "seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you." By "all these things," judging by the context of the saying, He means everything that pagans seek in earthly life. Everything is decided by the system of priorities: if it is right, the righteous person will not be left without food, unless, of course, his persecutors deliberately deprive him of that food, but that is another story.

The wicked person loses everything not because people will take everything from him, though such a turn of events is not impossible, but because he will receive neither the Kingdom nor salvation, so that with all his wealth he will share, in the biblical expression, "the way of all the earth." A way leading nowhere, as the authors of the biblical books say of it.

It often appears to us that, in general, we are initially well-disposed toward everyone in every situation, and that the way our attitude changes is determined by developing events. Thus, if our partner in a situation, our conversation partner, begins to disagree with us and argue, we begin to treat him worse, eventually reaching hatred. And if the partner is good toward us, then our goodwill toward him grows, reaching love.

The aphorism we have read today turns everything completely the other way around. The source of how events develop is in our heart. If hatred for our conversation partner "sits" there, it will certainly break out in quarrels, in a break of relations. And if love lives in us, then we are ready to forgive the harshest and most unpleasant words and deeds, even not to notice sins. The beloved person is the dearest no matter what, while the hated person has no chance even for dialogue. And the matter is not in the situation, but in ourselves.

At times it seems to us that hatred or simply hostility arises as a result of quarrels. In essence, when we think this way, we are trying to justify ourselves. The word of God says the opposite: the source of hostility and quarrels is found in our heart. If there is hatred in it toward the person we are speaking with, it will inevitably break out in quarrels, in the rupture of relationships. And if love lives in us, then we are ready to forgive the harshest and most unpleasant words and actions, even to overlook sins. A beloved person is dear to us no matter what, while a hated person has no chance even for dialogue. And the issue is not the circumstances of the relationship, but ourselves.

It seems to us mostly that we are initially kindly in every situation, and the way our relation changes, is defined by the developing events. So, if our partner, being in the situation of interlocutor, begins to disagree, to argue with us, we begin to behave more badly towards him, reaching finally to hatred. But if the partner is good to us, our kindness increases, coming to love.

The aphorism we read today overturns everything totally on the contrary. The source of the way events develop is in our heart. If the hatred towards the interlocutor "sits" in it {the heart}, then it will absolutely burst into strifes, in the break of relations. But if it is the love that lives in us, then we are ready to forgive the most rough and unpleasant words and acts, we will not even notice the sins. The one, whom we love, is dear to us in spite of everything, but the one that we hate has no chance, even for dialogue. And the problem is not in the situations, but in us.

It sometimes seems to us that hatred or simply hostility result from strifes. At the bottom, by thinking like that, we try to justify ourselves. God's Word asserts the opposite: the source of hostilities and strifes is inside our heart. If it contains hatred towards the interlocutor, then it (hatred) will absolutely burst into strifes, in the break of relations. But if it is the love that lives in us, then we are ready to forgive the most rough and unpleasant words and acts, will not even notice the sins. The one, whom we love, is dear to us in spite of everything, but the one that we hate has no chance, even for dialogue. And the problem is not in the circumstances of mutual relationship, but in us.

Among the accusatory prophecies we suddenly hear news of the coming King, filled with the Spirit, in whose Kingdom there will no longer be enmity either among animals or among people. But God has just been rebuking His people! Someone may say that He is inconsistent or unjust: if He has rebuked, then He must also punish. But Scripture reminds us that God's love is stronger than human sin; in His mercy God comes not to the righteous, but to sinners.

This hymn, connected with the preceding messianic prophecy, can become our prayer as well, since we live in an age when the prophecies are being fulfilled. People from all nations call on the name of the Lord and draw living water from Him (compare John 7:38); the Lord dwells in the midst of His people (Rev. 21:3).

But prophecies have one characteristic feature: the time of their fulfillment depends on the state of our heart. Living in the New Testament era, we can still find ourselves outside the salvation foretold many centuries before us. May "that day," the day of singing, joy, and salvation, come for us as well.

At first glance, the coming Savior is portrayed as a fearsome judge dealing with sinners, which would seem to be confirmed by the words that He will kill the wicked. But then we read that the wolf will lie down with the lamb, and the lion will eat straw. That means cruelty and predatory ways will no longer reign, not only in human society but even in nature. But if violence will not be needed even to protect lambs, why then kill a wicked human being?

These words, apparently, still refer not to sinful people who are under the power of evil, but to the inspirer of evil, the ancient tempter who provokes people to sin in the hope of enslaving their souls. In that case, the words about the victory over him, accomplished by the spirit of the Savior's mouth, should be understood as a prophecy of the Lord's final victory over every evil, which is to come at the end of time.

It may appear that different events are joined in the prophecy: the final victory over evil and the more immediate deliverance of the people from captivity. But there is no contradiction here; the joyful pictures of the people's liberation from foreign oppressors were seen by Isaiah as a foreshadowing of the coming victory of truth and justice for all nations. For every genuine good is a particle of that great good coming from the Lord, which in the end must triumph.

The most remarkable part of the parable of Noah is its conclusion (Gen 8:20-22). It speaks of the union, the "covenant," that God makes with Noah, and in his person with all righteous people who have ever lived and are now living on earth. And at this solemn moment the full limitation of human nature and human possibilities becomes clear. The image of God here is deliberately made somewhat archaic. The God of the Bible in this passage resembles the gods of Homer: like them, He "inhales," drawing into His nostrils the smoke rising to heaven from the sacrifice, which ancient pagans thought the gods fed on just as we feed on food. But the definition God gives the human race at this point is extremely severe: "every intention of the human heart is evil from his youth" (Gen 8:21; in the Hebrew text it is precisely "intentions," not "thoughts," as in the Synodal translation). That is why destroying the human race is pointless: even if only one righteous person remains on the whole earth, as happened after the flood, evil will still enter the world, if not through him, then through his descendants. And yet, making a covenant with Noah, God promises him that the catastrophe will not be repeated (Gen 8:22). Here the limits of human righteousness become clear, and here also lies the answer to questions often asked of Christians: why was it so necessary for the Savior to come at all? Why was some separate, special people of God needed? Are there not enough righteous people in the world, some of whom did not know and do not know about God, yet nevertheless live according to His laws, keeping the commandments He gave? Today, however, people more often speak not of righteous people but of "good people," though this does not change the essence of the matter. The answer to these questions is simple and sorrowful: all the righteousness of all the righteous people in the world, people like Noah, all their faithfulness to God, is enough only to keep catastrophe from striking the world again, to keep it from collapsing into the abyss. This is the most they can do. They are not able to change the situation in the world radically or break the course of events, just as they are not able to change their own nature, damaged by the fall. For this, special efforts are needed; a special plan of God is needed, the plan for the salvation of the human person and the world, of which both the special people of God and the Messiah-Christ become a part.

God gives humanity another chance: He knows that not all people will be like Noah, and He knows this secret of the human person, of which people themselves are not always aware—that “every imagination of the heart is evil from youth.” God promises that humanity will never again perish in a worldwide catastrophe. He makes this promise, as it were, “in advance,” knowing of the apostasy to come. But for God this is not simply indulgence toward human evil and sin—He acts out of mercy, symbolized by the olive branch in the dove’s beak. His mercy is always given beforehand; it is never a “reward” for good behavior. He forgives, comforts, and saves (how else can His actions be expressed in human language?), giving us the opportunity to respond to His actions—with our own.

The salvation of humanity from the flood is presented by the author of the parable quite symbolically: people and animals are saved in the ark, on a ship built by Noah according to God's instruction. Literalists and biblical critics have broken many spears trying to prove, some the absolute historical reliability of the story, others its equally complete and absolute unreliability and the impossibility of the events described by the sacred writer.

Meanwhile, the author had no intention of describing events literally. After all, he borrowed the story of the flood itself from a myth he did not invent, as if giving the reader to understand in advance that his story has a symbolic character and should be perceived as myth, not as a chronicle. Yet myth for a person of the time of the Babylonian exile is not what myth is for us. For us today, myth is something like a fairy tale or legend, and we perceive such things as a kind of literary work in which there may be as much fiction as in the fairy tales of Charles Perrault or the Brothers Grimm.

For the ancients, however, myth was a description of reality, but a symbolic description. A symbol is not the same thing as allegory or fiction; it is not arbitrary. Symbols form a kind of language whose elements allow no more arbitrariness in their interpretation than the words of any natural language. The flood and the ship in which people are saved together with animals are a mythologem well known to the ancients, whether Egyptians, Sumerians, or Greeks.

Considered as history, such a mythologem really does look absurd. But when it is read precisely as a mythologem, as a phrase written in symbolic language, we receive meanings that are no longer absurd at all, and precisely the meanings that the sacred writer wanted to convey to us. The matter concerns the unity and wholeness of the entire human race, God's plan in which will and permission stand alongside one another. The flood is more God's permission than God's will.

God does not want the death of people, but humanity cannot go on existing in the spiritual state in which it found itself before the flood. God preserves humanity in the person of the righteous man and of the world that fits with him into his ship, built according to God's instruction. Humanity is not simply saved; it is cleansed and reborn. Or at least it receives a new chance to begin its history with a clean page, and what that page becomes depends on people.

So the Lord looked at all this ugliness and came to the conclusion that He had worked in vain. He had created the world and cared for it, while people took it for granted and forgot the Creator. What next? And next... Every evil, like a stone thrown upward, returns and falls on the one who threw it. Up to a certain point the Lord held out His hands and protected people from these stones, the consequences of their sins. But then came the moment when He decided to remove His hands. Dishonest, unfair? But why, exactly? After all, we are speaking of a situation in which people reject God by all their behavior. And the Lord chooses one person, more precisely, one family. Let us venture to suppose that the one chosen was not simply someone especially pleasing to God. Most likely, Noah was simply the only one capable of hearing His voice! So God speaks with the one person who hears Him. And if enough people had been ready to listen, most likely there would have been no flood at all. But in that situation the Lord did the only thing possible: He warned of the danger the only one who was listening, and by his faith the fragile little vessel on which Noah was saving his family and the animals protected them from the water. A fairy tale, a parable, an image? Is it so important what the scale of the flooding of Mesopotamia was in unknown ancient years before our era? Something else is more important: in this story, once again, we are given the opportunity to look at how the Lord acts. And the main conclusion that can be drawn is simple: the foundation of relationship with God is readiness to listen and trust.

The covenant-union with Noah is the main event of the parable, its center of meaning. Here we no longer have simply a relationship with a particular person, but precisely a union with him and with all his descendants, and that is serious, forever - for God, unlike a human being, keeps steady and unconditional faithfulness to the obligations He has taken upon Himself and to the word once given. Not because He lacks power over His creation, but because all His promises and unions are connected with His plan. His plan does not change merely because some human being betrays Him or turns away from Him. Such is the covenant with Noah, and through him with all humanity.

Still, not with all in every sense. On the one hand, the covenant with Noah really does concern everyone; on the other, it is revealed in its fullness only in the righteous, who, like Noah, "walk before God," walking as it has been revealed to them. In this connection a question arises: why did God need anything else? Why the people of God, why the Messiah? Why is the covenant with Noah alone not enough? In the language of a modern person this question sounds somewhat different, although its meaning does not change: why is it not enough simply to be a "good person"? In that case, of course, everyone understands "good person" in his own way, but the general idea remains the same: there are many good people in the world, however one understands the expression. They are already good without any additional effort; they do not need to be Christians or even simply believers in God; they are righteous in life. So why do they, or the world in general, need anything else? The answer to this question is given in the parable of Noah.

Yes, God makes a covenant with him, but in making it He says: every intention of the human heart is evil from his youth. In the Hebrew text of the parable it is precisely intentions, not thoughts. Even a righteous person cannot change himself without special efforts specially applied by God. He can follow God in spite of his own nature corrupted by sin, overcoming the intentions of his own heart, but he cannot change his heart and his nature by himself, even if he makes every effort to do so.

Here there is an impasse: after the fall, the human person is doomed to balance all the time on the edge of a very serious spiritual collapse, and with him the whole world is likewise doomed to balance on the edge of collapse. That is why the covenant with Noah is not enough. It is only the beginning of the way, and in no sense the end or the completion, which is impossible without God. God Himself will eventually place the final point on the way of humanity's return to God, but He will not place it soon, since the whole way still lies ahead. Noah takes the first step on that way, a very important and absolutely necessary step, but only the first.

Having found Noah, who fulfilled God's command to build the ark, God accomplished the salvation of humanity from the worldwide flood. Noah and his family disembarked onto dry land; he was saved. How often, in a similar situation of deliverance from danger, we forget how only recently we cried out to heaven and prayed in complete despair! Relief came — well, good, that is how it should be. Not a word of gratitude; more than that, it does not even come to mind where the deliverance came from.

But Noah acts differently. He offers sacrifice to God because he understands that he did not save himself, although it was not God who built the ark, but Noah; rather, God saved him. And precisely because of this, Noah can become the ancestor of humanity after the Flood: he heard God in the midst of ordinary life, he trusted Him in danger, and he did not forget Him in joy. With such a Noah, God can make His agreement-covenant, and now God announces His decision, what He promises Noah and his descendants: there will be no more destruction of everything living, the earth will no longer be cursed because of man and his sin. And if we have any basis at all for confidence that life will not cease, it is precisely this promise of God.

God gives humanity another chance: He knows that not all people will be like Noah, and He knows this secret of the human person, of which people themselves are not always aware—that “every imagination of the heart is evil from youth.” God promises that humanity will never again perish in a worldwide catastrophe. He makes this promise, as it were, “in advance,” knowing of the apostasy to come. But for God this is not simply indulgence toward human evil and sin—He acts out of mercy, symbolized by the olive branch in the dove’s beak. His mercy is always given beforehand; it is never a “reward” for good behavior. He forgives, comforts, and saves (how else can His actions be expressed in human language?), giving us the opportunity to respond to His actions—with our own.

The most remarkable part of the parable of Noah is its conclusion (Gen 8:20-22). It speaks of the union, the "covenant," that God makes with Noah, and in his person with all righteous people who have ever lived and are now living on earth. And at this solemn moment the full limitation of human nature and human possibilities becomes clear. The image of God here is deliberately made somewhat archaic. The God of the Bible in this passage resembles the gods of Homer: like them, He "inhales," drawing into His nostrils the smoke rising to heaven from the sacrifice, which ancient pagans thought the gods fed on just as we feed on food. But the definition God gives the human race at this point is extremely severe: "every intention of the human heart is evil from his youth" (Gen 8:21; in the Hebrew text it is precisely "intentions," not "thoughts," as in the Synodal translation). That is why destroying the human race is pointless: even if only one righteous person remains on the whole earth, as happened after the flood, evil will still enter the world, if not through him, then through his descendants. And yet, making a covenant with Noah, God promises him that the catastrophe will not be repeated (Gen 8:22). Here the limits of human righteousness become clear, and here also lies the answer to questions often asked of Christians: why was it so necessary for the Savior to come at all? Why was some separate, special people of God needed? Are there not enough righteous people in the world, some of whom did not know and do not know about God, yet nevertheless live according to His laws, keeping the commandments He gave? Today, however, people more often speak not of righteous people but of "good people," though this does not change the essence of the matter. The answer to these questions is simple and sorrowful: all the righteousness of all the righteous people in the world, people like Noah, all their faithfulness to God, is enough only to keep catastrophe from striking the world again, to keep it from collapsing into the abyss. This is the most they can do. They are not able to change the situation in the world radically or break the course of events, just as they are not able to change their own nature, damaged by the fall. For this, special efforts are needed; a special plan of God is needed, the plan for the salvation of the human person and the world, of which both the special people of God and the Messiah-Christ become a part.

The short proverbs begin. They look like a scattering of individual aphorisms and sayings and may seem like an unsystematic and chaotic collection of unrelated phrases. But if we look closely, we can see a picture emerging from their diversity as from a mosaic.

At first, some judgments may seem overly straightforward, and counterexamples can be offered to the examples of the benefits received by the righteous, apparently testifying to the contrary. First, however, we should not become so absorbed in them that we fail to notice that the wicked have by no means always enjoyed the fruits of their crimes. Then we realize that Scripture says the same thing while also revealing the meaning of what is happening: “The labor of the righteous leads to life, the success of the wicked to sin,” and “the hope of the wicked will perish,” even if for the moment their paths appear successful. This will pass, and much sooner than it seems...