LISTEN TO ME, YOU ISLANDS; hear this you distant nations: Before I was born the Lord called me; from my birth he has made mention of my name. He made my mouth like a sharpened sword, in the shadow of his hand he hid me; he made me into a polished arrow and concealed me in his quiver.
He said to me, "You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will display my splendor." But I said, "I have labored to no purpose; I have spent my strength in vain and for nothing. Yet what is due me is in the Lord's hand, and my reward is with my God."
And now the Lord says - he who formed me in the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him and gather Israel to himself, for I am honored in the eyes of the Lord and my God has been my strength - he says: "It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth ..."
"CAN A MOTHER forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me ...
"KINGS WILL BE your foster fathers, and their queens your nursing mothers. They will bow down before you with their faces to the ground; they will lick the dust at your feet. Then you will know that I am the Lord; those who hope in me will not be disappointed ...
"I WILL MAKE your oppressors eat their own flesh; they will be drunk on their own blood, as with wine. Then all flesh will know that I, the Lord, am your Savior, your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob."--Isaiah 49: 1-6, 15-16, 23, 26
A SONG OF VOCATION AND consequence. A song also of contrary and contrasting rhythms; power and weakness, strength and failure of nerve. A great calling is heard, and is met with a sense of inadequacy, all but overpowering. Thus the humanity (and the sublimity) of the song.
The servant gives witness, speaks (verse 1). By way of contrast, if God speaks, it is only by way of quotation; "thus she said." The servant offers credentials; a claim is issued that God has intervened. But we must, as usual, take the servant's word for the events recounted.
Thus we are put squarely in a situation of immediacy and trust; we name it faith. We take the servant's word, on behalf of the Word of God. Thus the word passes along, one generation to another, to ourselves. Friendship and affinity are strongly awakened from the start, and we place ourselves unobtrusively in a line of noble believers. Reading as we run "the race," running the race of faith, even as we read.
The servant shouts urgently into the winds, even into adverse winds. Let those afar take heed, as well as those near at hand!
This credential, this claim - who I am - is of great consequence to all. For two reasons; one implied, the second stated. Implied: The story of Isaiah is the story of all. In your lives, too, in their very inception, God has intervened. The prophet is sent to offer the Word of God far and wide, as well as to Israel.
Thus to begin. Before my birth, before my parents thought to name me, God pronounced my name. Once and for all. What name? The name in any case, stands for a primordial choice, vocation, summoning. It sets all in motion, for the space of a lifetime, until death, and beyond.
Thus a way is indicated, before birth; and limits are set. Someone knew one's name, before one was named. Before one could pronounce his name, someone had announced it. Before self-knowledge, there was knowledge. Before one could set about an errand in the world, or gain an inkling as to the direction life would take, errand and direction were appointed. Someone's love holds dear, in more senses than one.
Thus we touch on a question of humanism. A hint is offered, light cast. What is a human being?
One, even one unborn, is - in the eyes of Another - someone. And this remains true even though (in the metaphor, the penetration of the darkness of prebirth) in one's own eyes one cannot possibly, as yet, be anyone at all. The glance of God comes to rest, holds the unborn in her love, close as in a mother's womb.
How many ways there are of aborting this insight! Ways of holding life cheap; one's own, the lives of others. Misnaming or unnaming what God has, once and for all, named.
One thinks of the killing abstractions that dispose of others, that strip the name conferred on each by God, that abandon people to sword or famine - or the culture - to war, or "overpopulation." We stand trembling in the midst of this shambles, and mourn. We are the children, witnesses, citizens, of a massive misnaming, de-naming, of those named by God.
This is the demonic course of empire, in our lifetime, as in that of Isaiah. He, too, mourned the plight of the powerless and poor, the exiles, those under siege. So he must all the more vehemently vindicate the love that "does not abandon or grow weary." He must keep naming those named by God, lest the name of God herself be impugned, lost. Lest the God who names be misnamed.
Thus also the diatribes of Isaiah against idolatry. Those who misname humans do likewise in regard to God. They give over the glory of God to stocks and stones. Idolatry for Isaiah was not a "religious" question devoid of human, political consequence.
The disenfranchising of humans, by way of slavery or murder, stigma, ostracism, does not stop there. The business of empires is also the (strictly understood) business of idolatry. The "also" is redundant. The one implies the other; maltreatment of humans, denying them a name, naming them for death, cheapening and devaluing the living - this is a summons to the idols; it is to name them god.
Further, if God has given us a name, it is in order that we may name things, name creation. Call the shots. This is a precious reflection. It summons a power all but vanished from the earth.
We note another power, a far different one, at work. The idols confer on their votaries the awesome, deranging power of misnaming creation. This goes far beyond a game of words. Minds and hearts are damaged in their native function: to grasp the truth, to embrace moral goodness.
Thus judgment and conduct are twisted. Crime becomes a tool of authority, murder a legitimate defense, terror a normal climate, greed and appetite a rule of thumb. The culture, in its worst and loudest and most persuasive elements, calls the moral shots. What is right is merely what is useful or attractive to appetite, greed, ego, power. And the devil take the hindmost.
What sort of world is left to us, when matters proceed in such wise, without challenge or impediment?
We must answer; it is the world we inhabit and bequeath to our children. Behold the revenge of outraged creation. What we are left with is possibly the nearest equivalent to hell - on earth, as is said.
Nonetheless, the de-creators are not finally in charge, despite all pretensions. There is the Word of God to be taken in account. And there are the servants, servants of justice and truth, not of the idols - those named of God, those truthfully naming things.
NOTICE THE WEAPONS IMAGERY of verse 2! And yet the images are expressive of nonviolent realities; the sword (power of truth), the sharp arrow (right direction of mind). And neither, sword or arrow (images both of servant and service), is designed for killing, any more than the servant is. Each is "hidden" in God.
Which is to say, the servant has embraced a certain willed ignorance; of outcome, result, effectiveness, success; all those "weasel" words. Such willed ignorance is crucial; it might be equated with detachment of heart. It clears the space of the soul, to the point that one is free to concentrate on essentials, the goodness and truth of the task.
Otherwise, were one to make of results or achievement the pivot of activity, a kind of violence insinuates itself into the scene. Then the sword and arrow come alive, enticing images of violence. They lose their power of leading beyond themselves into realms of nonviolence; lose their hiddenness, their power of evoking mystery.
Results! Efficiency! Now the sword and arrow stand only for themselves, in worldly fashion; a sword is a sword is a sword. No longer a talisman, a sign. The sword, in effect, creates a swordsman. So with arrow and archer.
No obsession with results! The task of truth-telling carries its own credential.
It is said in effect, "I," the servant, the sword of God, am hidden in the shadow of God's hand. And "I," the arrow of God, am hidden in God's quiver. A word of providence certainly; but a hint also of the detachment of heart required, if the truth is to have its proper hearing.
Hidden not in God's hand, but in "the shadow of his hand." So often providence is a mystery, a darkness. By no means does God exempt the servant from tragedy and death.
The shadow is heaviest, darkest, at the "other end" of vocation. Shall my life go somewhere, mean something to others? Mean something to God? One is not to know (a command which by no means forbids one asking the questions, again and again).
An arrow dreaming of flight, dreaming perhaps of a direct hit; but all the while "hidden in God's quiver." To all intents, the arrow might never fly. Indeed of itself the arrow can go nowhere, short of the drawn bow and the hand and arm (and eye!) of the archer.
THE FIGURE IS REMARKABLE. The one who glorifies God (verse 3) is also the hidden one, waiting a moment, the word of Another.
Who is to judge, who deny or affirm? Different estimates are drawn, regarding the life and work of the servant. God speaks, the servant answers. And the mood darkens. The servant is disheartened, not at all reassured by the comfort of God. God begins. God praises the servant; "you glorify me." Simple words, expressive of the highest nobility accorded the human. The encomium, one might think, ought to put to rest, once and for all, any reservations, second thoughts, discouragement, on the part of the servant.
By no means! No hint of the servant being raised to a serene ecstatic plane, where worldly cares, defeats, matter not a whit. The blessing of God is no perpetual transfusion of sweetness and light. The servant hears the word of approval and blessing; he is grateful for it; in principle, as they say.
Meantime, there is the world. And the task, hard and most often thankless. Work, defeat, scorn, and no outcome. An obdurate wall stands firm against all consolation. Divine approval? Perhaps, but fortune remains opaque, its slings and arrows undeflected.
We are in goodly company. The Word of God is no stranger to our most terrible hour. The servant of God, we are told, knows utter discouragement, wearing down, is beset by a sense of uselessness. "All for nothing," "all in vain" wells up, the heart's cry.
This is the rub; it rubs a life raw. Somewhere at the edge of conscience, never entirely quelled or put to silence, a voice seeks a hearing: "Ought not great results follow valiant efforts, the world's folly yield before patient goodness?"
The illusion of logic? Effect, we are told, ought to follow cause, all else being equal. Good ax laid to the root, extirpation shortly of said root. Evil done with once and for all - or, at least, this once!
We had best go slowly, in accord with the method of Christ. Can laws of logic be directly applied to spiritual activity?
Christ offers another way. He treads with care the realm of analogy and parable. Thus the "realm of God," that master image of history come to term, is portrayed almost gingerly in hidden, gradual, modest terms. While time lasts, we are instructed, everything human must be granted its own rhythm. Everything - including evil, that stubborn root.
So the assurance, the blessing and promise "I am with you," is by no means offered as a universal solvent, healing all wounds, comforting all distress.
There are puzzling matters aplenty here, including repeated biblical claims of God's being "in charge." (In charge, it seems at times, of a universal bedlam!) But the claim must be separated out from any divine "policy" of political salvation, interference with evil, blind succoring, punishing and rewarding on the spur of moment, cajoling the backslider, pointing the infallibly right (or wrong) way, justifying the presumptuous just, punishing the presumed wicked.
There is another world of images offered by Christ; better, dramatized by him. Images of waiting, observing, debating, healing, conveying hope and humor, telling stories that end with a question lodged like a seed in the heart.
These "other images" are the theme of the Peruvian poet, Cesar Vallejo, in his poem called "God":
I feel that God is traveling
so much in me, with the dark and the sea.
With him we go along together. It is getting dark.
With him we get dark. All orphans...
but I feel God. And it even seems
that he sets aside some good color for me.
He is kind and sad, like those who care for the sick;
he whispers with sweet contempt like a lover's;
his heart must give him great pain.
We note the plaint of the servant, seeing that for all his efforts nothing of the immovable world moves. We recall also an even more tragic and blood-ridden plaint, uttered on the cross by the Servant of servants: "Why have you abandoned me?"
And we, too, come bruisingly up against the blank wall, the non-dialogue, the nearly unbearable tension between God's long view and the servant's anguish. Long view or blindness, obscure presence or blank illusion? In any case, the terrible silence of God. And the world, that mad machine, rolls on.
Perhaps the verses are not meant as a dialogue; perhaps rather in the nature of a summing up. Each insists on the truth of a perspective; one speaking from the end of things, the other from within the travail and fury of life.
And each must hear the other out.
It is as though we were offered here, in two short verses, a kind of miniature Book of Job. Faith as drama, dialogue, opposition, hope. Faith as conflict, however unevenly matched. Insistence by each that the other take him in account, attend to a missing clue, a predicament, an outcome.
VERSES 5 AND 6 ARE personal, yet intensely universal. The light once struck enlightens all. The servant is called by name, then sent forth for the sake of others.
"Too small a thing then...." Is there irony here, urging the servant to summon a better, more hopeful mood?
Something like: "Could you, setting out on so difficult a road, have expected not to encounter the worst of the world's wiles and contempt (as well as the worst of yourself!) along the way?
"What indeed did you expect? Because the errand was a noble one, sanctioned and blessed by God, should all go smoothly? Alas, the 'world, the way it goes' decrees otherwise...."
Something of temperament, something of "the world."
When the servant can do very little, she can still do something. Nowhere to go, no one to turn to, tasting the lees of helplessness, still she calls out in the night, "cries out to my God." The nearest description of her condition is - death.
It may dawn on her after a time that she is not alone at all. She is surrounded by a multitude of others; like her, they are bewildered, all but lost. They form a very chorus of grief. "The Lord has forsaken me, my Lord has forgotten me."
And they win a hearing. Despite all.
NOT LIGHTLY OFFERED, God's consolation (verses 15-16). "Can a woman forget her suckling child, that she should have no compassion on the child of her womb?" And again, "Behold, I have graven you on the palms of my hands." And yet again, "I shall give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth."
And then, the principalities to be reckoned with.
It is to the advantage of these awesome entities that the servant be persuaded of the void between his vocation to others, to the world, and something commonly known as "reality."
Let us picture the servant. He walks the modern world, whose nearest description is a moonscape or a desert thrice salted. He seeks to follow his vocation. And then someone unnamed (indeed disguised as servant of light and truth) appears at hand. The stranger offers to show the aspirant a hellish epiphany, the other side of the moon, the salt machine beneath the salt earth.
The kingdom of this world. The "primum mobile," the hidden machine, to whose tempo all things visible move. A monstrous form!
The Pentagon. The secret bunkers, bulging with doomsday. The laboratories and forges of Mars.
The implication is clear. Join! Enlist! Or failing that, some slight qualm of conscience, an echo of another word intruding, a "Thou shall not ..." In any case, and above all else, the folly of the enterprise; pitting one's self against a behemoth, an irresistible force.
The lesson is driven home; the guide is nothing if not clear. "All power is given, not to you, a rag-tag savior driven half mad in the desert sun. And whatever god summons you to whatever folly. All power is given - me.
"Still, let us be generous. Possibly, there might be handed over, to the right party, a hands-on portion, benefit, some small slice of the investment. With, of course, a clear understanding as to methods and means. Let us even urge that the ideal form of worldly power is - within limit - democratic.
"On the other hand, all this talk, wild talk! Judgment, accountability, right and wrong. What nonsense! Where the power resides, the proof, is after all in this: the high regard Lord Nuke attains and holds; and the pitiably low esteem someone like you earns - society or church - little difference.
"Come now. Who is esteemed, who despised? Whose presence in the world is considered normal, whose a matter of scandal?
"Taking heed of such matters is plain good sense. They are truths all the more important for being unpleasant. Take in account the twin powers - the cravings, the fear and trembling, the twin treasures, so to speak, of each. Let me assure you, they are by no means adversarial or at odds.
"Indeed how could they be? Each resembles the other, each is attentive, above all else, to its turf. I serve each."
And yet, and yet:
Kings shall be your foster fathers, and their queens your nursing mothers. With their faces to the ground they shall bow down to you and lick the dust of your feet. Then you will know that I am the Lord. Those who wait for me shall not be put to shame.
IN VERSE 26 IS echoed the bizarre imagery of the Book of Revelation, a battlefield-banquet (Revelation 19:17-20). A great battle is envisioned; but then - no battle occurs!
The imagery shifts to a banquet hall. We are onlookers at a horrid feast, in which human flesh is the menu. Indeed, the circle from Genesis forward is closed.
The first parents were instructed to "eat freely of every tree of the garden" except one. They disobeyed and thus renounced their stewardship; became, in effect, consumers. The step shortly led to the first battle, between brothers. Then to murder.
And the end, as the Book of Revelation indicates, is a horrid anti-Eucharist, a banquet of the kingdom of darkness. Its piece de resistance is human flesh. Thus the biblical judgment of the "oppressors."
Daniel Berrigan was a Sojourners contributing editor, priest, poet, and peace activist when this article appeared. His latest book at time of publication was To Dwell in Peace (Harper & Row, 1987).
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