Haftarah Commentary: Isaiah 61:10 – 63:9

We are approaching the last Shabbat before Rosh Hashanah. Slichot is just a few days away. We have crawled out of the despair of Tisha b’Av and stand at the cusp of the Days of Awe, when repentance, atonement and forgiveness are at hand. On this shabbat, we recite the Seventh Haftorah of Consolation, Isaiah 61:10- 63:9, a passage from the anonymous prophet of the late exilic period known to scholars as Third Isaiah.  He sees before him the advent of a new age, when “a new historical event”¹ is about to take place: the reestablishment of the covenantal relationship between God and Israel. 

For the prophets of the exile, such a renewal was not assured. Formerly, covenant had been based either on observance of mitzvoth, a morality expressed in the soaring language of Hosea and Amos in return for God’s love and protection (the Sinai version), or God’s love for David guaranteeing political sovereignty. In Babylon, the latter concept was certainly smashed. And the former? Well, scripture had made it very clear: “If you fail to observe faithfully all the terms of this Teaching that are written in this book…Adonai will scatter you among all the peoples from one end of the earth to the other…Adonai will send you back to Egypt in galleys, by a route which I told you, you should not see again. There you shall offer yourselves for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves, but none will buy.”²

According to the earliest traditions in Deuteronomy,³ Israel’s disobedience abrogated the covenant once and for all. We were no longer God’s people. We will be too abject even to be the scorned slaves of our human enemies. 

As the theologian Gerhard von Rad explains, in pre-exilic times a saving act in the past established the relationship between God and Israel: “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt”. The Judahites and their prophets in Babylon needed to look forward. For them, the divine saving act predicative of a covenant was in the future: anticipated, hoped for. Third Isaiah announces this intent: 

For the sake of Zion, I will not be silent, 
For the sake of Jerusalem, I will not be still, 
Till her vindication emerge resplendent 
And her salvation like a flaming torch. (62:1) 

Zion. The mountain of God. But also metonymy for God’s people, the Jewish people. 

For most of Jewish history, “Zion” resonated with glory and security. It might have been Jerusalem, although that connection was not explicit. It might have been limited to the mountain on which the temple stood. But overall, it implied God’s presence and the surety of God’s enduring covenantal relationship with the Jewish people. 

Isaiah’s prophecy announced the restoration of the covenant. God would return to Zion and restore Jerusalem. The Judahites who remained loyal to God despite the punishment of exile would be vindicated. Their salvation was imminent. 

Today, for many, the connotations brought up by “Zion” are uncomfortable, even cringe-worthy. Like many of the place names imbued with theological significance in our sacred texts and liturgy, Zion has been tainted by its association with the political agenda of Zionism, an ideology which for many – whatever it started out as – is associated with ideas of Jewish supremacy, exclusive right to the land, ethnic cleansing and genocide. 

Perhaps that’s not entirely off. For the prophet known as Second Isaiah, Zion was closely associated with the Davidic dynasty. And as Jon Levenson explains, “In the case of the Davidic covenant [in contrast to the conditional Sinai covenant], history and morality are no longer the focus, for any claim God might make peculiarly upon the house of David has already been established by its founder.”⁴ Maybe Zionism was chosen as the name for the Jewish self-determination movement in part because it made no moral demands on Jews. Some early Zionists, after all, dreamed of a place where Jews would be like any other people. As Bialik put it: "We will be a normal state when we have the first Hebrew prostitute, the first Hebrew thief, and the first Hebrew policeman.”⁵  

The State of Israel has met Bialik’s challenge and in so doing has helped further corrupt the meaning of prophetic terminology. Alas, we regularly hear modern appeals to a Davidic covenant claiming eternal ownership of the land. But for us today, what is the point of restoration if not to restore the intimacy of a people and their God, wherein we would “shine a light unto the nations,” “walk in paths of righteousness,” exemplify loving-kindness, and eschew idolatry? To care for the widow and the orphan, for the stranger in our midst? To remember that everyone – Jew and non-Jew – is made in the image of God and behave accordingly?  

For the sake of this Zion, this Jerusalem, we can neither be silent nor still.

1 Gerherd von Rad, Old Testament Theology II:117.
2 Deuteronomy 28:58-68. 
3 The earliest layers of Deuteronomy are generally dated to the period of Josiah (640-609 BCE), but an argument for an even earlier date – the time of King Hezekiah (coincident with the destruction of the Northen Kingdom – 722-721 BCE) – can be made. In that argument, the end of the northern kingdom served as a cautionary tale for Judah, demonstrating the absolutist terms of the Sinai covenant. 
4 Jon Levenson, Sinai & Zion, 100-101.
5 Google search, citing the Times of Israel 1/27/2015.