000 Allen FMT (i-xxii) - The Presbyterian Leader

4 Third Sunday of Advent/Year A
We are told however that the ideal Davidic king shall “kill the wicked”
(v. 4). But it is an extremely odd kind of killing: he will do it “with the
breath of his lips,” his words, not his weapons of war.
The contrast between this future state and the all-too-typical history of
human warfare could hardly be greater than it is in this poem. In 10:32–33,
describing a state of war preceding the utterance of this poem, Isaiah portrays
the destruction of nature that took place in the total warfare waged
by the competing powers of the region: “the tallest trees will be cut down,
and the lofty will be brought low. He will hack down the thickets of the
forest with an ax, and Lebanon with its majestic trees will fall.” But in the
new age to come, the chaos that engulfs both nature and history will itself
be vanquished. The covenantal ecology of Scripture includes nature.
Romans 15:4–13 picks up on the basic biblical theme of blessing (wellbeing)
that is to be shared in by both Jews and Gentiles and, thereby, indirectly
in today’s reading from Isaiah and quite directly on a number of
other passages in Isaiah, for example, 49:6.
Third Sunday of Advent/Year A
Isaiah 35:1–10
Isaiah 35 has to do with the restoration of the land of Judah, following
conflict with Edom, known in the Scriptures as the land south of the Dead
Sea. Chapter 34 deals with the destruction of Edom subsequent to conflict
between Edom and Judah (34:9). In today’s reading, Isaiah looks forward
to what a restored Judah, Jerusalem, and the Temple will look like.
Verses 1–2 and 6b–7 concentrate on the restored ecology of Judah: the
land, rivers, living things, marshes, and rain. There is throughout Israel’s
Scriptures a primary concern for the well-being of all God’s creatures,
including the created order itself. Christians, for most of our history, have
paid little attention to this biblical ecology and sometimes have even systematically
eliminated it from our understanding of the Scriptures by
insisting that the only proper interpretation of the Old Testament is to
view everything material as a stand-in for a spiritual reality. Being concerned
with the well-being of actual earthly turf was less important than
understanding passages such as this one as pointing to the coming of
Christ. Yet the Parousia of Christ, as Paul understood it, would also set
the creation free from its bondage to decay (Rom. 8:18–25).
In Isaiah’s imagined future “the wilderness and the dry land shall be glad,
the desert shall rejoice and blossom” (v. 1). This would better be translated: