We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.
God’s “Ways” and “Thoughts” are Higher
Isaiah 55:8-9 is one of the more often quoted passages in the Bible. It reads:
… my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways …
As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts (vss. 8-9).
This passage is frequently cited as an expression of God’s “wholly other” transcendence, sometimes even being invoked to protect incoherent theological positions from reasonable objections. However, is this what God’s “ways” and “thoughts” are referring to here?
If we read from verse one in this chapter, we see that verses 8-9 actually conclude a larger section where the Lord confronts the nationalistic myopia of his people by announcing that anyone from any nation who is thirsty or hungry can come and feast at his banquet table for free (vss. 1-2). He promised all who come to his feast that he will bring them into the “everlasting covenant” that he “promised to David” (vs. 3). For, the Lord says, David was raised up not just to be the earthly king of the Jews but also to be a “witness” and “ruler” of all nations (vs. 4). If Israel was God’s chosen nation, we see, it was only to be used to help all nations realize that they too are “chosen.”
The Lord reiterates this point further when he goes on to proclaim to his nationalistic-minded people that they will someday “summon nations you know not, and nations you do not know will come running to you” because the Lord “has endowed you with splendor” (vs. 5). Only then can we see what is really going on when the Lord proclaims the nature of his “ways” and “thoughts.”
Yahweh is here confronting the myopic, nationalistic mindset of his people. His ways are “higher” than theirs precisely because, while Israel always had a tendency to think Yahweh somehow belonged uniquely to them, everything Yahweh was doing in and through them was in fact being done with a view of reuniting and blessing all humans by bringing them under his loving reign.
Image by Samuel Zeller.
Category: General
Tags: Covenant, God, Israel, Nationalism, Transcendence
Topics: God
Verse: Isaiah 55
Related Reading
A Revelation of Beauty Through Ugliness
In my recent post, Getting Honest About the Dark Side of the Bible, I enlisted no less an authority than John Calvin to support my claim that we need to be forthright in acknowledging that some of the portraits of God in the OT are, as he said, “savage” and “barbaric.” What else can we…
Podcast: Dear Greg: What Should I Do If My Husband Wants a Divorce Due To His Desire to Live as a Gay Man?
God is a God of broken covenants. Greg considers broken covenants and what to do in the rubble of one. http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0279.mp3
Reasons God Does Not Control Everything
First, the belief that God is all-powerful does not mean that God exercises all power. It only means that God is the ultimate source of all power. Fallen people may value the ability to control others and project this attribute onto God (Matthew 20:25-28). But the cross breaks all of our fallen assumptions about what…
Reflections on the Influence, and Damage, of Plato’s Timaeus 28a
The Timaeus is Plato’s account of the creation of the world. Ancient philosophers were divided as to whether Plato meant the work to be taken literally or mythically, as are modern scholars. The work was arguably the single most cited work by early church fathers. And the text I want to reflect on (28a) is…
Don’t Be a Functional Atheist at Christmas
All of us raised in Western culture have been strongly conditioned by what is called a secular worldview. The word secular comes from the Latin saeculum, meaning “the present world.” A secular worldview, therefore, is one that focuses on the present physical world and ignores or rejects the spiritual realm. To the extent that one…
Why Did God Require Animal Sacrifice in the Old Testament?
Question: I have a question about the atonement. Why did YHWH in the OT demand that people sacrifice animals? And if these sacrifices anticipated the ultimate sacrifice of the Messiah, as the author of Hebrews says, doesn’t this imply that Jesus’ death was necessary for God to forgive us? But why would God need his…