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

66 Proper 11 [16]/Year A
weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Wisdom repeatedly emphasizes that God
will punish the wicked (e.g., 3:10–13; 4:20–5:23; 11:15–12:2; 12:23–27),
but the punishment is much less severe than being cast into a furnace of
fire. In this respect, the Wisdom of Solomon portrays God as a little more
gracious than does the Gospel of Matthew.
Isaiah 44:6–8 (Alternate)* (Paired)
Second Isaiah spoke to the people in Babylon surrounded by the local
gods and their worshipers. Like us, they lived in an idolatrous culture.
What made matters worse was that the gods of Babylon appeared to be
quite successful in the eyes of many members of the exilic community. It
was widely assumed that a deity’s majesty rose and fell with the success or
failure of that deity’s city-state. This was not the case with YHWH, who
could use other nations and their armies to bring about judgment on
YHWH’s own people, but it was nonetheless a widely shared assumption
in the ancient world.
In this context, Marduk appeared to a defeated people as powerful
indeed, while YHWH looked like a deity defeated at the hands of Babylon.
These displaced Jerusalemites would have been regularly exposed to
celebrations of Marduk’s destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. Marduk’s
temples were magnificent; YHWH’s lay in ruins. The problem facing
Isaiah was that Marduk-worship seemed to “work” while bitter doubt
could easily beset those who had put their reliance on YHWH. Hence,
today’s reading is a proclamation that “there is no god besides” YHWH
(v. 8) followed by a lengthy argument against idolatry; verses 9–20 satirize
idols and idol manufacturing.
Verses 6–8 and 21–23 frame this section of Isaiah. The Lord is creator
and redeemer of Israel, the first and the last, the rock (the salvation) of
Israel; God formed Israel as God’s servant, swept away Israel’s sins and
redeemed Israel. God is the God of creation and redemption who will be
praised by the heavens and the forests and who will be glorified in Israel.
Verses 9–19 describe the process of making idols and then worshiping
them, lampooning the idea of giving ultimate devotion to things that we
have made—those who do this do not have the sense to see that “this thing
in my right hand [is] a fraud” (v. 20).
Two issues arise for today’s church from this passage. One is posed by
verses 9–20. Statues, images, stained-glass windows, Torah scrolls, Bibles,
Communion ware—all are created by human hands or technological
processes of manufacture. This does not make them “frauds.” All religions