Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Isaiah 9:2 The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; Those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, Upon them a light has shined.
EARTHLY DARKNESS -- HEAVENLY LIGHT
This passage is quite often and easily taken to express the great light of the truth of God's word as it appears to heathen living in the darkness of unbelief. The context of the passage however shows that Isaiah had a slightly different meaning foremost in his mind.
When Isaiah talks of those "walking in the darkness" he is not initially speaking of spiritual darkness. The people he is speaking of here are those of the land of Zebulun and Naphtali. These are the tribes settled around the Sea of Galilee, on the northwestern border of the promised land. The very ones upon whom the destruction at the hands of the Assyrians would come first. The very people who lived most obviously under the very shadow of the Assyrians.
Isaiah has already pronounced judgment upon them: the Assyrians are coming. This land lies not only under the wrath and punishment of the Assyrians, but even under God's. Within the year misery beyond anything they had known or thought possible would come upon them.
Furthermore, the entire chapter is set within the pre-messianic nationalistic concept of God's work. It does not speak of an outgoing from Israel to the nations of the earth but rather of a restoration of the Davidic line, and the perfection of the state of Israel.
The concept set forth by Isaiah here then is not one that predicts the coming spread of God’s word among the Gentiles. Rather, Isaiah pictures for us the child of God who walks in the vale of darkness of this world under the shadow of the miseries laid upon him here.
Isaiah reminds such people to look to the coming light of the perfection of God's kingdom. He speaks of this promise to the remaining remnant of true believers in Israel, the true Israelites, that when the destruction of Assyria fell upon them -- and the darkness of that deathly nation -- they might not lose heart, that they not give up on the Lord.
For behold, he says to this people: The light will come again. And the physical misery which surrounds you now cannot be compared with the glory and the joy and the hope of that spiritual dawn which will return when the Son of David comes to Galilee to establish the true kingdom of God.
