1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:18,059
Hello, I'm Dr. Kevin Golden, Dean of Theological Research and Publication at Concordia Seminary

2
00:00:18,059 --> 00:00:19,602
in St. Louis.

3
00:00:19,602 --> 00:00:22,313
Welcome to Concordia Theology.

4
00:00:22,313 --> 00:00:27,026
Today we're in conversation with Dr. Paul Raabe, one of my formative influences, having

5
00:00:27,026 --> 00:00:29,571
been a student of his here at the seminary.

6
00:00:29,612 --> 00:00:37,746
He's an emeritus member of our faculty and has just published Isaiah 13-27 in the Concordia

7
00:00:37,746 --> 00:00:39,164
Commentary Series.

8
00:00:39,164 --> 00:00:43,001
Paul, welcome and congratulations on finishing off this commentary.

9
00:00:43,001 --> 00:00:44,753
Well, thank you very much, Kevin.

10
00:00:44,753 --> 00:00:45,754
It's great to be here.

11
00:00:45,754 --> 00:00:47,213
It's a real joy to be here.

12
00:00:47,213 --> 00:00:51,217
And I have to say, I'm going to find this fun to talk about with you because you may

13
00:00:51,217 --> 00:00:57,390
recall back when I was your MDiv student, I had a class specifically on Isaiah 1-39

14
00:00:57,390 --> 00:00:58,391
with you.

15
00:00:58,433 --> 00:01:00,477
That was part of the discussion in that class.

16
00:01:00,477 --> 00:01:06,941
And then as a PhD student under you, I had a class where we were really watching the

17
00:01:06,941 --> 00:01:08,568
work of David Noel Friedman.

18
00:01:08,568 --> 00:01:11,696
He was our major figure that we were kind of taking a look at.

19
00:01:11,696 --> 00:01:18,077
And in that class, again, I remember we gave attention to this specific section of Isaiah.

20
00:01:18,077 --> 00:01:20,622
So I get a third round with you now.

21
00:01:20,622 --> 00:01:21,623
Well, that's wonderful.

22
00:01:21,623 --> 00:01:27,796
And I remember you as a student, a first class student, and it's great to see you here.

23
00:01:27,796 --> 00:01:32,717
So let's talk about the work that you did here with Isaiah 13-27.

24
00:01:32,717 --> 00:01:36,012
Let's start talking about methodology.

25
00:01:36,012 --> 00:01:37,013
How did you write it?

26
00:01:37,013 --> 00:01:38,139
What is your approach that you took?

27
00:01:38,139 --> 00:01:42,685
Well, so first of all, I wrote this for non-Lutherans.

28
00:01:42,685 --> 00:01:45,605
Not that a Lutheran wouldn't benefit from it.

29
00:01:45,605 --> 00:01:49,943
And 98% of the country is non-Lutheran.

30
00:01:49,943 --> 00:01:57,617
And I believe that we have to all learn to preach and teach and write in ways that are

31
00:01:57,617 --> 00:02:01,371
intelligible to non-Lutherans.

32
00:02:01,371 --> 00:02:04,749
We complain how Washington, D.C. kind of works in a bubble.

33
00:02:04,749 --> 00:02:10,547
Well, we should not be working in some bubble of just Lutherans talking to Lutherans.

34
00:02:10,547 --> 00:02:17,554
So we need to learn to make it intelligible to a general audience.

35
00:02:17,554 --> 00:02:23,977
Secondly, we need more confidence in the causative power of the Word of God taught in His truth

36
00:02:23,977 --> 00:02:28,857
and purity to convince people that the Holy Spirit works through the Word to convince

37
00:02:28,857 --> 00:02:32,026
people to lead them to repentance and faith.

38
00:02:32,026 --> 00:02:39,367
And so we kind of need more confidence that the Scriptures say what they say, and the

39
00:02:39,367 --> 00:02:45,248
Holy Spirit works through the Word to create and sustain faith.

40
00:02:45,248 --> 00:02:51,212
But the third thing we need to realize is the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation.

41
00:02:51,212 --> 00:02:56,718
The Gospel is resistible, and there will always be people who will say no, and some

42
00:02:56,718 --> 00:03:00,930
people will dig in their heels and adamantly say no.

43
00:03:00,930 --> 00:03:05,310
They crucify, you know, our Lord was crucified.

44
00:03:05,310 --> 00:03:14,402
So this is the profound theology that we take the Word of God and His truth and purity to

45
00:03:14,402 --> 00:03:20,575
the nations with confidence that the Holy Spirit through the Word creates and sustains

46
00:03:20,575 --> 00:03:29,918
faith so we have confidence in the causative power of the Word and expect to land in jail.

47
00:03:29,918 --> 00:03:30,919
That's the approach.

48
00:03:30,919 --> 00:03:32,420
Expect to land in jail.

49
00:03:32,420 --> 00:03:37,008
Isaiah himself did not exactly have a warm reception.

50
00:03:37,008 --> 00:03:41,679
Isaiah 6, although that's not part of this commentary, famous for, hey, he's going to

51
00:03:41,679 --> 00:03:47,602
go out and he's called by the Lord to deliver the Word to those who although they see, they

52
00:03:47,602 --> 00:03:50,313
will not perceive, they hear, they do not understand.

53
00:03:50,313 --> 00:03:58,363
That's right, and the ancient record is that Isaiah was sawed in half under Manasseh.

54
00:03:58,363 --> 00:04:03,201
And you know, you have to think, huh, the mighty seer of old treated as just so much

55
00:04:03,201 --> 00:04:04,202
garbage?

56
00:04:04,202 --> 00:04:05,203
Yeah.

57
00:04:05,203 --> 00:04:06,204
You know.

58
00:04:06,204 --> 00:04:12,752
And our Lord Himself speaks that way about how this is what happens about, well, 

59
00:04:12,752 --> 00:04:13,795
into the Beatitudes.

60
00:04:13,795 --> 00:04:18,675
He talks about how when you're rejected for my sake, well, so you know, you're blessed

61
00:04:18,675 --> 00:04:21,386
because after all this is what happened to the prophets as well.

62
00:04:21,386 --> 00:04:22,845
That's right.

63
00:04:22,845 --> 00:04:31,354
But we do need confidence in the causative power of it and so I do believe we have to,

64
00:04:31,354 --> 00:04:39,112
everybody has to learn to write and teach and preach in a way that's intelligible to

65
00:04:39,112 --> 00:04:40,113
non-Lutherans.

66
00:04:40,113 --> 00:04:43,032
98% of the country is not Lutheran.

67
00:04:43,032 --> 00:04:48,913
So you can say this is a thoroughly Lutheran treatment of the text, but in such a way that

68
00:04:48,913 --> 00:04:53,751
it's not just kind of screaming out to people, you've got to be a Lutheran to take this.

69
00:04:53,751 --> 00:04:58,798
But rather it's faithful, after all it did pass doctoral review obviously, coming out

70
00:04:58,798 --> 00:05:00,633
of Concordia Publishing House.

71
00:05:00,633 --> 00:05:06,431
So thoroughly Lutheran, but on the other hand it's also accessible to those who aren't Lutherans.

72
00:05:06,431 --> 00:05:07,432
That's right.

73
00:05:07,432 --> 00:05:08,433
It won't seem like...

74
00:05:08,433 --> 00:05:10,184
We can't use our insider jargon.

75
00:05:10,184 --> 00:05:14,647
We have to be able to make it intelligible to non-Lutherans.

76
00:05:14,647 --> 00:05:22,322
And it's biblical, the scripture, so we should not think of ourselves as some idiosyncratic

77
00:05:22,322 --> 00:05:23,323
sect.

78
00:05:23,323 --> 00:05:24,323
Right, right.

79
00:05:24,323 --> 00:05:30,163
Well after all, since the hallmark of Lutheranism is Sola scriptura, our fidelity to the word

80
00:05:30,163 --> 00:05:34,417
of God, and where scripture speaks we speak, where scripture is silent we're silent.

81
00:05:34,417 --> 00:05:38,588
If we are being thoroughly biblical that means we're being thoroughly Lutheran in the process.

82
00:05:38,588 --> 00:05:45,136
So yeah, so it's a biblical exegetical commentary on these chapters.

83
00:05:45,136 --> 00:05:52,810
My approach was basically this way, and I think these steps, these moves have to be

84
00:05:52,810 --> 00:05:56,314
done in this sequence, philological.

85
00:05:56,314 --> 00:06:03,196
So you plow through the Hebrew, lexicon, grammar, then literary.

86
00:06:03,196 --> 00:06:06,616
Isaiah was the great Shakespeare of the Bible.

87
00:06:06,616 --> 00:06:14,373
His poetry is beautiful, so you have to appreciate his poetry, and his use of imagery, and metaphor,

88
00:06:14,373 --> 00:06:16,918
and simile, so a literary approach.

89
00:06:16,918 --> 00:06:23,508
And I'm a big firm believer in tracking his thought progression, how does it flow from

90
00:06:23,508 --> 00:06:25,259
verse to verse.

91
00:06:25,259 --> 00:06:29,639
And then the third move is, it's a holistic approach.

92
00:06:29,639 --> 00:06:37,980
So I refuse to smash it up into little pieces, and then rearrange those pieces.

93
00:06:37,980 --> 00:06:49,700
We should read it in a holistic way, and I refuse to do what Jim Voelz calls, it's a

94
00:06:49,700 --> 00:06:57,291
great idiom, of helicoptering down and hoisting some verses out of their context.

95
00:06:57,291 --> 00:07:03,464
So people do that with chapters 24 to 27.

96
00:07:03,464 --> 00:07:09,679
They hoist those chapters out of their context, and they transport them to a later century.

97
00:07:09,679 --> 00:07:15,434
So they interpret chapters 24 to 27 in light of the Hellenistic period.

98
00:07:15,434 --> 00:07:23,484
Well I completely disagree, you have to understand these chapters in the context of the surrounding

99
00:07:23,484 --> 00:07:24,485
chapters.

100
00:07:24,485 --> 00:07:26,195
You can't lift them and move them somewhere else.

101
00:07:26,195 --> 00:07:29,407
So not only is it literary context, but historical.

102
00:07:29,407 --> 00:07:32,285
And then the next move is historical.

103
00:07:32,285 --> 00:07:35,955
So holistic, and then historical.

104
00:07:35,955 --> 00:07:39,876
But I think the historical has to come later.

105
00:07:39,876 --> 00:07:43,754
The temptation is for people to go to the historical too soon.

106
00:07:43,754 --> 00:07:50,595
So we first of all, what does the Hebrew actually say, how does it say it, a literary, a holistic,

107
00:07:50,595 --> 00:07:54,932
and then we can talk about the historical side of things.

108
00:07:54,932 --> 00:07:59,479
So I do believe, you know, the book needs to be understood historically, no question.

109
00:07:59,479 --> 00:08:04,400
And then the fifth move is theological.

110
00:08:04,400 --> 00:08:10,489
And this is the Word of God, what is God saying?

111
00:08:10,489 --> 00:08:12,658
So those are the five kind of hats.

112
00:08:12,658 --> 00:08:14,660
Would you even think of this?

113
00:08:14,660 --> 00:08:18,080
A philological, literary, holistic, historical, theological.

114
00:08:18,080 --> 00:08:23,294
And they're all blended together, but I think we have to know which hat we're wearing, and

115
00:08:23,294 --> 00:08:25,588
what we're doing at a given time.

116
00:08:25,588 --> 00:08:29,425
Would you even think one builds on the other, that you've got to get the text down?

117
00:08:29,425 --> 00:08:30,426
Yeah.

118
00:08:30,426 --> 00:08:33,221
And then you build on top of that, because you've laid the foundation of, here's just

119
00:08:33,221 --> 00:08:34,680
simply what the Hebrew is.

120
00:08:34,680 --> 00:08:35,681
That's right.

121
00:08:35,681 --> 00:08:39,894
So some literary work, and keep moving, and then you get to the crown jewel, which is

122
00:08:39,894 --> 00:08:41,687
the theology of the text.

123
00:08:41,687 --> 00:08:43,689
That's right.

124
00:08:43,689 --> 00:08:47,151
And it's profound theology, even in these chapters.

125
00:08:47,151 --> 00:08:53,449
These chapters are often overlooked by people, but they constitute 20% of the book.

126
00:08:53,449 --> 00:08:58,746
They're essential to the message of the book, and powerful theology in these chapters.

127
00:08:58,746 --> 00:09:01,999
Well, let's start talking about the content of these chapters.

128
00:09:01,999 --> 00:09:06,379
It's not what necessarily pops up a lot in the lectionary, so we maybe don't hear it

129
00:09:06,379 --> 00:09:07,463
as much.

130
00:09:07,463 --> 00:09:14,804
And often a better part of this area, we often refer to as the oracles against the nations,

131
00:09:14,804 --> 00:09:17,306
or oracles about the nations.

132
00:09:17,306 --> 00:09:22,812
But I notice you kind of take a different kind of title than oracle.

133
00:09:22,812 --> 00:09:29,986
Well so, each section is labeled a masa in Hebrew, and the word masa is a common noun,

134
00:09:29,986 --> 00:09:31,904
and it means burden.

135
00:09:31,904 --> 00:09:35,491
That's how you should translate masa.

136
00:09:35,491 --> 00:09:41,372
And so Isaiah gives 10 burdens in chapters 13 to 23.

137
00:09:41,706 --> 00:09:42,999
Ten burdens.

138
00:09:42,999 --> 00:09:48,004
And I take that as kind of denoting completeness.

139
00:09:48,004 --> 00:09:49,714
Ten fingers.

140
00:09:49,714 --> 00:09:57,513
So it's kind of a statement about what God is about to do to the non-Israelite nations.

141
00:09:57,513 --> 00:10:01,142
But what's interesting is, a couple things.

142
00:10:01,142 --> 00:10:08,149
One is, he puts northern Israel in the list, and he puts Jerusalem in the list.

143
00:10:08,190 --> 00:10:14,989
So they've kind of acted like Gentile nations, they're going to be treated like Gentile nations.

144
00:10:14,989 --> 00:10:15,740
That's the first thing.

145
00:10:15,740 --> 00:10:21,912
But the second thing is, yes, the prophet announces coming judgment against these places,

146
00:10:21,912 --> 00:10:25,875
but God's ultimate goal is salvation.

147
00:10:25,875 --> 00:10:33,674
So in these chapters, Isaiah will often talk about how God will bring the Gentiles to himself.

148
00:10:33,674 --> 00:10:36,927
He'll bring the Gentiles to Zion.

149
00:10:36,927 --> 00:10:42,641
He'll turn the Gentiles away from themselves to the living God.

150
00:10:42,641 --> 00:10:50,024
And so God's ultimate goal with the Gentiles is salvation as well.

151
00:10:50,024 --> 00:10:54,362
Which is a theme not just only here in Isaiah, but you can find that theme throughout the

152
00:10:54,362 --> 00:11:00,951
whole of Isaiah, this concern for bringing the Gentiles to Zion, to Yahweh.

153
00:11:00,951 --> 00:11:02,953
That's right.

154
00:11:02,953 --> 00:11:09,877
So the way I like to say it is, God has been fulfilling Isaiah and the prophets for the

155
00:11:09,877 --> 00:11:13,964
last 2,000 years, and we're part of the fulfillment.

156
00:11:13,964 --> 00:11:19,679
We're Gentiles, America wasn't even on the map in Bible times.

157
00:11:19,679 --> 00:11:23,307
Isaiah would have said, you're Gentiles at the end of the earth.

158
00:11:23,307 --> 00:11:29,021
And here we Gentiles at the end of the earth worship the Holy One of Israel through Jesus

159
00:11:29,021 --> 00:11:34,360
the Messiah, and we even read Isaiah in Hebrew.

160
00:11:34,360 --> 00:11:35,986
He'd be flabbergasted.

161
00:11:35,986 --> 00:11:38,864
You Gentiles are studying Isaiah in Hebrew.

162
00:11:38,864 --> 00:11:40,324
Yes, yes.

163
00:11:40,324 --> 00:11:45,287
So we want to understand this, as you were rightly saying before, in its own context,

164
00:11:45,287 --> 00:11:48,207
literally and otherwise, but also historically.

165
00:11:48,207 --> 00:11:53,754
So the right way to first read the text is in its 8th century BC context before we start

166
00:11:53,754 --> 00:12:00,136
making moves to other time frames, including making the move, the critical one, the one

167
00:12:00,136 --> 00:12:07,601
we have to do is how does this find its fulfillment in the incarnation ministry of our Lord and

168
00:12:07,601 --> 00:12:08,602
Savior.

169
00:12:08,602 --> 00:12:09,603
That's right.

170
00:12:09,603 --> 00:12:11,689
But also about application to today.

171
00:12:11,689 --> 00:12:13,149
But we can even go beyond that.

172
00:12:13,149 --> 00:12:16,694
There's some eschatological content here.

173
00:12:16,694 --> 00:12:17,695
Exactly.

174
00:12:17,695 --> 00:12:27,455
The way I like to put it is God began to bring about a preliminary BC realization in BC time

175
00:12:27,455 --> 00:12:31,709
through Assyria, and a lot of it relates to that.

176
00:12:31,709 --> 00:12:36,505
The fulfillment comes with the first coming of Christ and the church.

177
00:12:36,505 --> 00:12:38,591
The church is part of the fulfillment.

178
00:12:38,591 --> 00:12:42,720
The church is not some later invention.

179
00:12:42,720 --> 00:12:47,391
It's part of the fulfillment of the prophets, of Moses and the prophets.

180
00:12:47,391 --> 00:12:51,353
So we need to see the church as part of the fulfillment.

181
00:12:51,353 --> 00:12:55,858
And then the consummation is the second coming of Christ in glory.

182
00:12:55,858 --> 00:12:58,360
So we should kind of see it.

183
00:12:58,360 --> 00:12:59,361
We should relate.

184
00:12:59,361 --> 00:13:05,826
When Isaiah announces the future, we should relate it to the BC history of Israel, to

185
00:13:05,826 --> 00:13:10,831
Christ's first advent, to the life of the church, and to Christ's second advent.

186
00:13:10,831 --> 00:13:13,125
In other words, this whole, everything's connected.

187
00:13:13,125 --> 00:13:14,126
Yeah.

188
00:13:14,126 --> 00:13:15,127
It's all connected.

189
00:13:15,127 --> 00:13:18,422
There are a lot of dispensationalists who think, hey, God was doing one thing, but then

190
00:13:18,422 --> 00:13:20,257
he changed and did something different.

191
00:13:20,257 --> 00:13:24,512
No, there's a continuity that he's doing the same thing throughout, bringing about the

192
00:13:24,512 --> 00:13:29,475
fulfillment of everything that he has worked for his creation.

193
00:13:29,475 --> 00:13:39,109
So like a classic example, God says through Isaiah that one day the Cushites are going

194
00:13:39,109 --> 00:13:44,907
to bring their tribute to Zion, to God in Zion in Jerusalem.

195
00:13:44,907 --> 00:13:52,373
And 2 Chronicles 32 notes that sure enough, nations already at the time of 701 BC were

196
00:13:52,373 --> 00:13:55,376
bringing tribute to Jerusalem.

197
00:13:55,376 --> 00:14:00,297
So it's kind of like already in that day, God started to make, get it going.

198
00:14:00,297 --> 00:14:01,298
Yes, yes.

199
00:14:01,298 --> 00:14:06,762
Now, let's talk about specific Christological focus for this text.

200
00:14:06,762 --> 00:14:07,763
All right.

201
00:14:07,763 --> 00:14:14,395
So again, we had to understand it in its eighth century BC context, but what about the Christology

202
00:14:14,395 --> 00:14:16,355
of these chapters?

203
00:14:16,355 --> 00:14:17,356
Okay.

204
00:14:17,356 --> 00:14:26,115
So in the Old Testament, they'll announce the coming work of God in different ways.

205
00:14:26,115 --> 00:14:31,495
And one common way is kind of what we would call a monotheistic framework.

206
00:14:31,495 --> 00:14:36,125
The God, the creator of the heavens and the earth, the God of ancient Israel, one day

207
00:14:36,125 --> 00:14:39,044
will come mighty to save.

208
00:14:39,044 --> 00:14:41,881
So Isaiah will talk that way a lot.

209
00:14:41,881 --> 00:14:43,173
God is coming.

210
00:14:43,173 --> 00:14:46,844
And when God comes, big things are going to happen.

211
00:14:46,844 --> 00:14:52,182
And so within this framework, Jesus is God with us.

212
00:14:52,182 --> 00:14:53,392
God did come.

213
00:14:53,392 --> 00:14:55,519
Jesus is Immanuel.

214
00:14:55,519 --> 00:14:58,981
And that's one way.

215
00:14:58,981 --> 00:15:07,323
Another way though that Isaiah speaks is God is going to work through a human mediator.

216
00:15:07,323 --> 00:15:11,118
And in BC time, the classic example was King David.

217
00:15:11,118 --> 00:15:17,166
So in Isaiah 16, he announces that they're coming a new Davidic King who will sit on

218
00:15:17,166 --> 00:15:21,003
David's throne and rule in righteousness.

219
00:15:21,003 --> 00:15:26,508
And certainly, so Jesus is the fulfillment of all of these threads.

220
00:15:26,508 --> 00:15:28,677
These threads all lead to him.

221
00:15:28,677 --> 00:15:30,387
So he's God with us.

222
00:15:30,387 --> 00:15:37,269
He's the new Davidic King, you know, descendant of David and yet David's Lord.

223
00:15:37,269 --> 00:15:53,953
And then third would be Jesus as the new and greater prophet, Jesus as the Savior.

224
00:15:53,953 --> 00:16:04,380
So God promises in Isaiah 25 that one day God will swallow up death itself.

225
00:16:04,380 --> 00:16:10,803
And in 26, God promises that those who belong to God will rise from the dead unto eternal

226
00:16:10,803 --> 00:16:11,804
life.

227
00:16:11,804 --> 00:16:13,889
And Jesus is the fulfillment of that.

228
00:16:13,889 --> 00:16:16,266
It happens in him first.

229
00:16:16,266 --> 00:16:22,898
He swallows up death and he rises from the dead.

230
00:16:22,898 --> 00:16:25,901
And he will swallow up death when he comes again in glory.

231
00:16:25,901 --> 00:16:29,822
So there'll be no more church cemeteries.

232
00:16:29,822 --> 00:16:32,449
One day your church won't have a cemetery.

233
00:16:32,616 --> 00:16:33,617
Yes, yes.

234
00:16:33,617 --> 00:16:37,997
Now I have to say, because that's a wonderful connection, Isaiah 25, that was a text that

235
00:16:37,997 --> 00:16:44,128
when I was a parish pastor, I used repeatedly when it came to funerals.

236
00:16:44,128 --> 00:16:48,298
Wonderful text for a funeral because of what it declares about Christ and what is true

237
00:16:48,298 --> 00:16:50,718
of us in Christ as well.

238
00:16:50,718 --> 00:16:57,641
And another powerful part about that is it underscores the physical, the bodily resurrections

239
00:16:57,641 --> 00:16:58,642
it talks about.

240
00:16:58,642 --> 00:17:02,271
We get to consume the best of meats, the finest of ones.

241
00:17:02,271 --> 00:17:03,272
That's right.

242
00:17:03,272 --> 00:17:07,234
So we have to be physical in our thinking about the future.

243
00:17:07,234 --> 00:17:10,946
It's not just souls for eternity.

244
00:17:10,946 --> 00:17:16,076
God will raise up our bodies and we will live with him bodily.

245
00:17:16,076 --> 00:17:17,578
And it's a new creation.

246
00:17:17,578 --> 00:17:23,959
So yeah, we sometimes we get too platonic in our thinking.

247
00:17:23,959 --> 00:17:29,506
And Old Testament, well, the whole of scripture is just incredibly down to earth, very concrete,

248
00:17:29,506 --> 00:17:32,801
rejoicing in this good creation that God has given us.

249
00:17:32,801 --> 00:17:37,097
It's fallen, but he's going to restore, he's going to resurrect, he's going to recreate,

250
00:17:37,097 --> 00:17:40,559
and then we get the new heavens and the new earth in very physical fashion.

251
00:17:40,559 --> 00:17:48,108
My students here at the seminary gave a great translation of that passage in Isaiah 25 about

252
00:17:48,108 --> 00:17:50,569
the eschatological banquet.

253
00:17:50,569 --> 00:17:54,907
And in Hebrew, you have all kinds of sound plays.

254
00:17:54,907 --> 00:18:00,579
So it's going to be, God's going to create for all peoples a feast, a mishtei shema'im

255
00:18:00,579 --> 00:18:06,668
of fat things, a feast, a mishtei shema'im of aged wine.

256
00:18:06,668 --> 00:18:12,883
And then he repeats the fat things, shema'im, mamuchayim, fat things full of marrow.

257
00:18:12,883 --> 00:18:20,682
And then he repeats the aged wine, shema'im, mazukachim, well refined.

258
00:18:20,682 --> 00:18:24,812
And so you can almost, I call it Isaiah the rap artist.

259
00:18:25,229 --> 00:18:31,735
God is going to produce a mishtei shema'im, mishtei shema'im, shema'im, mamuchayim,

260
00:18:31,735 --> 00:18:34,363
shema'im, mazukachim.

261
00:18:34,363 --> 00:18:37,950
You can hear all the rhyming and the alliteration.

262
00:18:37,950 --> 00:18:43,831
So my students gave a great translation for this in my Isaiah class.

263
00:18:43,831 --> 00:18:47,459
And I'm real proud of this translation.

264
00:18:47,459 --> 00:18:50,129
They captured it in English.

265
00:18:50,129 --> 00:18:57,970
So Isaiah 25 verse 6, the Lord will make for all peoples on this mountain a feast of fine

266
00:18:57,970 --> 00:19:05,060
dine, a feast of fine wine, fine dine only prime, fine wine well refined.

267
00:19:05,060 --> 00:19:08,564
And I call it Isaiah the rap artist.

268
00:19:08,564 --> 00:19:12,943
Now I'm really impressed because when you try to make that move and try to capture those

269
00:19:12,943 --> 00:19:17,030
dynamics in English, that takes work.

270
00:19:17,030 --> 00:19:20,826
That's not easy to do, but they did a fantastic job of capturing it.

271
00:19:20,826 --> 00:19:22,536
Yeah, that's right.

272
00:19:22,536 --> 00:19:29,960
So this is the wonderful blessing of knowing Hebrew.

273
00:19:29,960 --> 00:19:36,675
You can read Isaiah in the original and you can see the poetry a lot better than when

274
00:19:36,675 --> 00:19:38,594
you read it in English.

275
00:19:38,594 --> 00:19:39,595
Yes.

276
00:19:39,595 --> 00:19:42,806
Now we're starting to wind down on our time together.

277
00:19:42,806 --> 00:19:48,520
So Paul, if I could ask you, your readers, when they pick this up, what is the number

278
00:19:48,520 --> 00:19:54,818
one thing you want them to walk away with after having consulted this commentary?

279
00:19:54,818 --> 00:20:07,289
Oh, well, rejoice in the work of Christ and his work of fulfilling Isaiah, both now and

280
00:20:07,289 --> 00:20:10,542
the promise of the future not yet.

281
00:20:10,542 --> 00:20:17,799
And on how our lives in the church now and our mission is part of the fulfillment that

282
00:20:17,799 --> 00:20:24,473
Isaiah promised 2,700 years ago in the city of Jerusalem in the Middle East.

283
00:20:24,473 --> 00:20:31,730
And we're now enjoying this age to come that he announced and we look forward to the full

284
00:20:31,730 --> 00:20:33,023
consummation.

285
00:20:33,023 --> 00:20:41,490
So Isaiah can instill in us hope, hope for the future, hope for God's future, not man's

286
00:20:41,490 --> 00:20:47,162
future, not man-made future, but the future that God will bring about.

287
00:20:47,162 --> 00:20:49,164
For our benefit.

288
00:20:49,164 --> 00:20:51,250
So it can instill in us hope.

289
00:20:51,250 --> 00:20:56,838
Isaiah can instill in us repentance and faith and hope.

290
00:20:56,838 --> 00:20:57,839
All right.

291
00:20:57,839 --> 00:21:00,884
Now, one thing that just kind of jumps in my mind, I think you were the first one that

292
00:21:00,884 --> 00:21:07,224
ever used this analogy that I learned back in my studies was I can hear in that a little

293
00:21:07,224 --> 00:21:11,895
bit of, if you will, the prophetic mountain range going on as far as all the different

294
00:21:11,895 --> 00:21:12,896
peaks out there.

295
00:21:12,896 --> 00:21:18,610
And here we are, we're between, we're residing between the peak of the incarnation and the

296
00:21:18,610 --> 00:21:21,405
peak of the consummation on the last day.

297
00:21:21,405 --> 00:21:24,908
And it's a great place to live, but there's even better place to live.

298
00:21:24,908 --> 00:21:28,120
And that's what we'll get at the return of our Lord and Savior.

299
00:21:28,120 --> 00:21:29,121
That's right.

300
00:21:29,955 --> 00:21:36,253
So the Christian life is letting the promises of God fill your heart and soul and mind.

301
00:21:36,253 --> 00:21:41,216
And that gives you strength to carry on in your daily life.

302
00:21:41,216 --> 00:21:45,721
Well, and I am thankful for this commentary because it's going to help in that very regard

303
00:21:45,721 --> 00:21:50,100
as we grapple with some very difficult material within these chapters.

304
00:21:50,100 --> 00:21:54,730
But yet, as you nicely set forth, they're always pointing us towards Christ, the fulfillment

305
00:21:54,730 --> 00:21:59,359
that has already come about in His life and ministry, but even more so the fulfillment

306
00:21:59,359 --> 00:22:02,321
that will come at His return.

307
00:22:02,321 --> 00:22:09,119
And just a little humorous note, but you don't want to have to imitate everything Isaiah

308
00:22:09,119 --> 00:22:10,120
does.

309
00:22:10,120 --> 00:22:15,959
So in chapter 20, Isaiah had to do an action prophecy and walk naked in barefoot for three

310
00:22:15,959 --> 00:22:16,960
years.

311
00:22:16,960 --> 00:22:19,671
So we don't have to recommend that.

312
00:22:19,671 --> 00:22:23,175
That's not the sermon illustration we're going to use.

313
00:22:23,175 --> 00:22:24,342
Well, wonderful.

314
00:22:24,342 --> 00:22:26,553
Thank you very much for your good, great work here.

315
00:22:26,553 --> 00:22:31,183
I know it's going to be a blessing to the church, to a lot of pastors, students of Scripture

316
00:22:31,183 --> 00:22:36,646
across the board as they dig deep into the word of the Lord delivered by His prophet

317
00:22:36,646 --> 00:22:38,815
Isaiah in these very chapters.

318
00:22:38,815 --> 00:22:39,816
Thank you very much.

319
00:22:39,816 --> 00:22:41,318
It's a joy to be here.

320
00:22:41,318 --> 00:22:46,740
And thank you for being with us as well and commend you to dig into Isaiah along with

321
00:22:46,740 --> 00:22:47,991
Dr. Raabe.

322
00:22:47,991 --> 00:22:50,452
Until next time, the Lord be with you.

323
00:22:50,452 --> 00:22:53,330
Come back with us again next time at Concordia Theology.