by
Damien F.
Mackey
“Though they hide from my eyes at the bottom of
the sea,
there I will command the serpent to bite them”.
Introduction
Charles
Boutfllower, in his 1930 classic, The Book of Isaiah, Chapters [I-XXXIX]
in the light of the Assyrian monuments, would liken the prophet
Isaiah, in his care of Immanuel, to the “Everlasting Father” (Chapter V:
Immanuel): “Both Isaiah and his son Immanuel were types of Christ. Isaiah
typifies Christ as the “Everlasting Father” of His people. Compare Isa. viii.
18 with Heb. ii. 13”.
Similarly,
Saint Joseph in the New Testament, typifies God the Father, while Jesus is God
the Son, and Mary, the created Immaculate Conception, mirrors the Holy Spirit,
the un-created Immaculate Conception (St. Maximilian Kolbe):
Maximilian Kolbe and the
Immaculate Conception — School of Faith
St
Maximilian was captivated by the fact that at Lourdes, in 1858, Mary stated her
name in a unique way saying: I am the Immaculate Conception! For Kolbe, since
these words came out of the mouth of Mary, they must indicate accurately and in
the most essential manner who she is. This left Kolbe with a burning Question:
Who are you, O Immaculate Conception?
To answer
this, Kolbe began with the Trinity. Who is the Father? What is his essence?
Because He begets the Son from eternity … the Father’s essential attribute is
begetting. Who is the Son? He is the begotten One; the Son is eternally
begotten of the Father. And who is the Spirit? He is the fruit of the love
between the Father and the Son. Now, the fruit of created love is a created
conception. Therefore, the fruit of divine love, the prototype of all love, is
the first conception. The Holy Spirit is, therefore, the Divine Uncreated
Immaculate Conception.
Here we
shall be looking at three instances of when the great prophet Isaiah fled.
The first
one will be based on what Charles Boutflower wrote in his Chapter V:
Immanuel, when Isaiah and his family, typifying the Holy Family of the New
Testament, had to flee from a wrathful King of Jerusalem.
The second
one will be the well-known (if poorly understood) flight of the prophet, as
Jonah, away from the Lord.
The third,
and last, one will be the aged prophet’s desperate attempt to escape another
wicked king of Jerusalem who was bent upon killing the inconvenient prophet.
Flight
from King Ahaz of Judah
This I wrote
about, following Charles Boutflower’s marvellous insight, in my article:
Isaiah
took his family north to escape the wrath of king Ahaz
(3) Isaiah took
his family north to escape the wrath of king Ahaz
Charles Boutflower,
reading between the lines, came up with the fascinating theory that Isaiah and
his family had felt compelled - just like the Holy Family that it typifies - to
escape, by flight, from a wrathful king.
“Butter and honey shall
he eat, when he knoweth to refuse the evil
and choose the
good.”—Isa. vii. 15.
In studying the Book of Isaiah, whether for our own
benefit or to edify others, the question will often force itself upon us, Who
was the typical Immanuel? and Who the maiden who typified the Virgin Mother? To
this question the commentators furnish various answers. But not to bewilder my
readers with endless discussions, I shall only lay before them that answer
which commends itself most to my own judgment. It seems, then, to me that
Immanuel was the prophet’s own son, and that the maiden who became his mother
was the prophet’s second wife. Isaiah’s first wife was the mother of
Shear-jashub. When the prophet at Jehovah’s command took Shear-jashub with him
and went to meet Ahaz, his first wife was dead; for he predicts that within a
year the nameless maiden, whom he intends to marry, will become the mother of
Immanuel.
Damien Mackey’s comment: According, though, to my
recent article:
Was Hosea’s
boy-child, Lo-Ammi, Isaiah’s famous son, Immanuel?
(2) Was Hosea's
boy-child, Lo-Ammi, Isaiah's famous son, Immanuel?
the mother of Isaiah’s
first son, Shear-jashub, was the self-same woman as was the mother of Immanuel.
Charles Boutflower continues:
After the birth of Immanuel this young woman, now the
prophet’s wife, is very suitably called “the prophetess,” just as Solomon’s
wives are called ‘‘queens” … and about a year later bears him a child, who is
called Mahershalalhashbaz. The grounds for this opinion are as follows. In
chap. viii. 18 the prophet says, “Behold, I and the children whom the LORD hath
given me are for signs.” He does not say that any other person’s children are
for signs: he only mentions his own. ….
In what way Isaiah and Shear-jashub were signs when
they appeared before king Ahaz in an acted parable we saw in our last chapter.
It now remains to add that all three children, Shear-jashub, Immanuel, and
Mahershalalhashbaz, were also signs in virtue of the names given to them. Thus
the name Shear-jashub, “a remnant shall return,” finds its explanation in chap.
x. 20-22, “And it shall come to pass in that day, that the remnant of Israel,
and they that are escaped of the house of Jacob, shall no more again stay upon
him that smote them; but shall stay upon the LORD, the Holy One of Israel, in
truth. A remnant shall return, even the remnant of Jacob, unto the Mighty God.
For though thy people Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them
shall return.” This is a promise that a small fraction of the nation, who have
escaped from the Assyrian deluge, shall no longer look for help to the power
that smote them, but shall return in all sincerity to their Almighty Deliverer,
the Holy One of Israel.
The significance of the name Immanu-El, as we have
already seen, lies in this, that God is
with us, i.e . with those who put their trust in Him. So then,
should the rising flood of Assyrian invasion overwhelm the Northern Kingdom,
and sweep onward into Judah, reaching even unto the neck, yet the nation shall
not go under, for the land thus submerged is “thy land, O Immanu-El.” O With
us-God! “Make an uproar,” then, “O ye peoples,” that go to form Assyria’s
mighty host: mobilise your forces, arm yourselves for the conflict. It is all
to no purpose: “ye shall be broken in pieces.” Let the wisest of your military
strategists take counsel together, and issue their commands to the troops under
them: all shall be of no avail, your counsels “shall be brought to nought,”
your orders shall never take effect, for—Immanu-El “God is with us!” ….
The name of the prophet’s third child,
Maher-shalal-hash-baz “Hasten booty, speed spoil,” is explained by God
immediately after the mention of his birth: “Call his name Mahershalalhashbaz.
For before the child shall have knowledge to cry, My father, and My mother, the
riches of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria shall be carried away before the
king of Assyria.” …. But if these three children were all signs in virtue of
the meaning of their names, there was one who was specially so called at the
time when his birth was predicted and his name given. For when unbelieving Ahaz
refused to ask for a sign, the prophet replied, “Therefore the Lord himself
shall give you a sign: behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and
shall call his name Immanuel.” …. The above considerations, then, may very well
lead us to look on Immanuel as the prophet’s own son, and to believe that
Isaiah like Hosea had three children, all of whose names were prophetic.*
Damien Mackey’s comment: According to my article
above, Isaiah was Hosea – the prophet and his wife having four
children of whom we are informed: three boys and one girl.
Charles Boutflower continues:
But there is a yet further ground for looking on
Immanuel as Isaiah’s own son and as own brother to Mahershalalhashbaz. It lies
in this, that notes of time couched in similar language were struck when the
births of each of these children were announced: the first note indicating a
longer interval, the second a shorter one, before the coming of the same event,
viz. the downfall of Syria and Israel. Of Immanuel it was said, ‘‘For before
the child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land whose two
kings thou abhorrest shall be forsaken.”
…. These words I have explained to mean, Before the child is old enough
to know what he may eat and what he must not eat: an explanation which agrees
with the previous context, where it is said that he will eat butter and honey
when he knows to refuse the evil and choose the good. The note of time,
therefore, in this instance signifies that within a very few years the land of
the two allied kings of Syria and Israel will be desolated. As a matter of fact
it was desolated within three years of the time when the sign was given. In the
case of Mahershalalhashbaz the note of time begins with the same words, but
points to a shorter interval: “For before the child shall have knowledge to
cry, My father, and, My mother, the riches of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria
shall be carried away before the king of Assyria.” If the first mention of this
child’s name was made in 734 B.C., and his birth took place in the following
year, then the above prediction, uttered at the time of his birth, was
fulfilled within about a year of that event. Having regard, therefore, to these
considerations, it seems most reasonable to look upon Immanuel as the older
brother of Mahershalalhashbaz. But this being so, the “virgin,” who became the
mother of these two children, must have been Isaiah’s second wife [sic].
If on the above grounds we are led to look upon the
typical Immanuel as Isaiah’s own son, a very interesting deduction follows:
viz. that within a year or two of Immanuel’s birth Isaiah must have left
Jerusalem for a while and gone to live in the now desolated land of Israel. For
it is predicted of Immanuel that when he is a young lad two principal articles
of his diet will be butter and honey: chap. vi. 15. And then, a little further
on in the same chapter, it is explained that this being obliged to depend on
butter and honey, will be a consequence of the Assyrian invasion: that owing to
the depopulation of the country, the land will go out of cultivation, and what
is now vineyards and cornfields will become thickets ; but that there will
still be pasturage for cattle, and the wild bees will still lay up their honied
stores, so that “butter and honey shall every one eat that is left in the midst
of the land.” Now since this description of Immanuel’s surroundings in his
early boyhood’s years does not apply to Judah and Jerusalem, but does apply to
the land of Israel, and especially to northern Israel, the presumption is that
Immanuel while still a young lad was taken by his father to live in the
northern kingdom, and into that part of the kingdom whose inhabitants had so
lately been carried captive.
What was the reason for a prophet, whose heart was so
centred in Jerusalem, leaving the Holy City and going to live in the desolated
land of the Ten Tribes? In all probability it was the wrath of Ahaz. When
Isaiah confronted Ahaz and bade him ask a sign of the LORD his God, the young
king’s evasive answer showed that he was afraid of the prophet ; and as he
listened to the terrible denunciations from the lips of Isaiah of the woes that
were coming on his country because of the line of policy which he had secretly
resolved to pursue, fear must have ripened into dislike and hatred. So then,
comparing the antitype with the type, even as Herod sought to destroy the
Divine Child whose birth might be supposed to endanger his throne, so Ahaz,
from a different motive indeed, may have sought to destroy the typical
Immanuel, the prediction concerning whose birth foretold the ruin of Judah at
the hands of Assyria. …. In this case it would not be long safe for the prophet
and his son to remain in Jerusalem. But whither shall he go when he leaves the
Sacred City? To Ahaz he has spoken of Syria and Israel as forming one land
though under two kings. …. This is because these two powers have for the time
being made themselves into one: “Syria is confederate with Ephraim,” literally
“resteth on Ephraim.” In the long-ago days “Ephraim departed from Judah’’—to
use the prophet’s own words—and now her land is one with the Syrians. But the
days of Ephraim’s existence as a separate kingdom are soon to come to an end.
Within a few short years Ephraim “will be broken in pieces that it be not a
people.” …. And with this disappearance of the kingdom of Ephraim before his
mind the prophet seems to have hailed the thought that the land occupied by the
two Jewish kingdoms, so long divided politically, was by Divine intention, no
less than by nature, one land. Hence, when telling how the flood of Assyrian
invasion will sweep over both kingdoms, he speaks of the two countries, thus
for a time submerged, as “thy land, O Immanuel,” and Thine in all its
“breadth.” …. If, then, our prophet must leave Judah, he need not leave
Immanuel’s land: he will go into that part of it which has just been placed
under the rule of Hoshea … and for greater safety he will go into that district
which lies furthest off from the capital of king Ahaz: he will “withdraw into
the parts of Galilee”. …. That Galilee, whose name is so endeared to us
Christians, was then a deserted region, its inhabitants having been recently
taken captive to Assyria. Their sad fate had fixed itself indelibly on the
prophet’s mind. Nevertheless, the Spirit had revealed to him that there, where
the first blow had fallen, the bright light of happier days, the days of the
Messiah, should first dawn. ‘‘For there shall be no gloom,” he writes, ‘‘to her
that was in anguish. In the former time he brought into contempt the land of
Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time hath he made it
glorious, by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, Galilee of the nations. The
people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwelt in the
land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.” ….
Many of the inhabitants of Galilee, as the previous
context shows, had been “driven away into thick darkness’’; the darkness of a
hopeless captivity. The present population was scanty; but in the Messianic
age, as the prophet foretells, Jehovah will “multiply the nation’’ and thus
“increase the joy”: a joy so great that it can only be compared to the
rejoicing before God at the harvest festival, or to the dividing of the spoil
after some signal victory. For Assyria’s oppressive “yoke” and heavy “burden”
no longer rests on the nation: the taskmaster’s “staff’? no longer descends on
its “shoulder.” …. The foe have been put to flight as on that day when the
countless hosts of Midian fled before the sword of the LORD and of Gideon. They
have vanished from the scene, and soon all the vestiges of hateful war shall
vanish likewise. Those long-laced boots, in which the warriors of the enemy
strode proudly amid the tumult … their thick, close-fitting tunics, now dyed
yet deeper with blood … shall make fuel for the fire. …. And the pledge of all
this is before his eyes as he looks at his own Immanuel. Immanuel! the type,
surely, of the long-promised Davidic King! “For unto us,” he cries, ‘‘a child
is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder’’—his
royal robe fastened at the shoulder marking him as the Divinely constituted
Ruler— “and his name shall be called Wonderful Counsellor,” fount of all
political wisdom and sagacity ; ‘‘Mighty God,” his people’s all powerful
deliverer; “Everlasting Father,” the father of his subjects, whose reign shall
know no end; and then, last and best of all, because most desired in that sad
day of domestic troubles and foreign invasion, “Prince of Peace”: peace,
internal no less than external: peace, the fruit of righteous rule and good
government: peace, ever on the increase with his ever-extending sway. How
fondly does the prophet dwell on this closing note! “Of the increase,” he
cries, “of his government and of peace there shall be no end, upon the throne
of David, and upon his kingdom, to establish it, and to uphold it with judgment
and with righteousness from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of Jehovah of
hosts shall perform this.” The zeal of Jehovah, His jealousy for His people,
ensures all. He is pledged to help them by this God-given name, Immanuel.
While Charles Boutflower
had suggested that Nazareth in Galilee was the likely destination for the
fleeing family, I would prefer, instead - based on what will now follow - that
Isaiah took his family to Gath-hepher in Galilee, a home of the prophet Jonah-Nahum
(2 Kings 14:25). And that this ancient site would later be re-named Capernaum, Kfar
Naḥum, ‘Nahum's village’, in honour of the prophet
(Jonah) Nahum:
Whence that name,
Capernaum?
(4) Whence that
name, Capernaum?
While
we know that no Old Testament prophet ever arose from Galilee (John 7:52),
Gath-hepher/Capernaum in Galilee would become a temporary place of refuge for
the anguished prophet. And his anguish may only have increased if Gath-hepher
was the actual place from which Jonah was later called for his mission to
Nineveh (Jonah 1:1-2): “The word of the Lord came to Jonah son
of Amittai: ‘Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it,
because its wickedness has come up before me’.”
Flight
from the Lord
Jonah,
of course, had other ideas (v. 3): “But Jonah ran away from
the Lord and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where
he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and
sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord”.
He
would now attempt to go further northwards, to Tarsus in Cilicia:
Flavius Josephus
was right to identify “Tarshish” as Tarsus
(5) Flavius
Josephus was right to identify “Tarshish” as Tarsus
Most of us are quite
familiar with the story.
Chad Sellman has neatly
summarised the first part of it (2007):
"Going Up" and
"Going Down" in the Book of Jonah
In the book of Jonah, the
ideas of “going up” and “going down” are significant and often indicate the
state of Jonah’s obedience to God’s divine call. When the word of the LORD
comes to Jonah at the beginning of the book, God commands Jonah to “Arise” … and
“cry out against” the great city of Nineveh (Jon 1:2). The reason that God
gives his prophet this particular command is because the distress or wickedness
of the city had “come up” … before the LORD. Because the distress of Nineveh
had “come up” before the LORD, he commands his prophet to “get up” and cry out
against the city. Jonah responds to this divine imperative by “rising up” … but
only so that he can “flee to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD” (1:3).
After rising up to
flee from God’s call, Jonah begins to go down away from the
LORD’s presence. He first goes down (dry) to Joppa, and then he “goes down”
(dry) into a ship that is just about to leave for Tarshish (1:3). When the
water becomes turbulent because of the great wind the LORD hurls upon the sea,
the captain finds Jonah sleeping in the innermost part of the ship, for he had
“gone below” (dry) and fallen into a “deep” sleep … (1:5). The depth of Jonah’s
plummet is starkly contrasted by the captain’s orders to “get up” … and call
out for divine aid (1:6). After it becomes clear that Jonah is the cause of the
nautical tumult they are experiencing, the sailors hurl Jonah into the ocean
where a divinely appointed “great fish” swallows Jonah whole. Just as Jonah was
in the innermost part of the ship, he is now in the innermost part of the
“great fish” which he likens to “the depths of Sheol” (2:3). In his prayer,
Jonah describes how he “descended” (dry) to the depths of the mountains/sea
(2:7). In this moment of contrite confession before the LORD, Jonah’s descent
ends as the LORD his God “brings him up” out of the pit (2:7), and commands the
fish to “vomit up” … Jonah onto the dry land (2:11).
….
Tarsus was never going to
be far enough away from the Lord.
The prophet Isaiah’s
father, Amoz (Amaziah), Jonah’s “Amittai”, who lived to write about this first
calling of his son to Nineveh, but not the much later second one:
Jonah’s two
callings to Nineveh were spaced well apart in time
(6) Jonah's two
callings to Nineveh were spaced well apart in time
would make this famous
comment about the extraordinary incident (Amos 9:3): “Though they hide from my
eyes at the bottom of the sea, there I will command the serpent to bite them”.
Flight to
martyrdom
The
last occasion of flight for our much-tried prophet occurred right at the end of
his life, when he, as Isaiah, was martyred by Manasseh, the idolatrous King of
Judah. The prophet Jeremiah wrote about it briefly in the context of the wicked
king, Jehoiakim, who fuses with Manasseh in my revision:
Manasseh -
Jehoiakim
Jeremiah
here calls our prophet by another name, Uriah (or Urijah) (26:20-23):
(Now Uriah son of
Shemaiah from Kiriath Jearim was another man who prophesied in the name of
the Lord; he prophesied the same things against this city and this land as
Jeremiah did. When King Jehoiakim and all his officers and officials heard
his words, the king was determined to put him to death. But Uriah heard
of it and fled in fear to Egypt.
King Jehoiakim,
however, sent Elnathan son of Akbor to Egypt, along with some other
men. They brought Uriah out of Egypt and took him to King Jehoiakim, who
had him struck down with a sword and his body thrown into the burial place
of the common people.)
