40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Isaiah 19:1-20:6 (Episode 461)

Episode Date: April 29, 2025

The gods of Egypt will tremble as the Lord rides in. Why is the Nile so important? Why does God call Egypt His people? And a prophet must go around naked for three years. Have a listen. Show Notes: Support 1517 Podcast Network 1517 Podcasts 1517 on Youtube 1517 Podcast Network on Apple Podcasts 1517 Events Schedule 1517 Academy - Free Theological Education What's New from 1517: Celebrate 2,000 Episodes of Christian History Almanac! The Impossible Prize: A Theology of Addiction by Donavan Riley Ditching the Checklist by Mark Mattes Broken Bonds: A Novel of the Reformation, Book 1 of 2 by Amy Mantravadi  More from the hosts: Daniel Emery Price Chad Bird

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 podcast network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast. check out all the other podcasts that are living over there and while you're over there make sure you check out everything else that 1517 is doing all those articles all those academies, all those events all those videos, why don't you order some of Chad's books

I mean I know a lot of you guys have read some books by Chad but what if you haven't you can go there and you can find all the books from Chad on one spot and just stack up that library and get those books from Chad if you haven't done it yet

and while you're doing all those things of course go over to the donate page and uh if you're not a contributor yet if you're not a supporter you could do that as well and we'd very much appreciate it that's how all this stuff is possible it's how it's all free uh so we would love it if you did that thank you very much to those of you who already do that all right chad isaiah chapter 19 is where we're at we're just uh on an oracle binge here i mean we have you if you were if this is your favorite part of the bible is oracles and you've been you've been loving the last few episodes because it's oracle after oracle and we're not done yet uh we got oracle concerning hey this is a nation that still exists

a nation that we know about egypt uh not one of these places where you have to tell people where it is chad do people okay maybe you do i don't know how everyone's geography is but you know at least it's somewhere if you've never even read the one page of the bible you've heard of this place yeah this is and we are on the oracle uh oracle kick this is the fifth so babylon philistia moab damascus and now and now egypt and this is uh this is this is quite the oracle especially when we get to the end of it i mean we're going to bring in assyria we're going to bring in egypt and we're going to bring in israel and all three of these are going to be worshiping the God of Israel. So it's going to be quite the conclusion to this chapter. Before we get there,

we have to hear about basically how people shouldn't put their trust in Egypt. And this was an ongoing temptation for the Israelites. You know, of course, when you start out the Bible, all the negative stuff's about Egypt, right? Well, besides the fact that this was the bread basket that saved Abraham and Sarah. And, you know, it's kind of positive in the time of Joseph, at least. But once you get to Exodus, everything about Egypt is negative, negative, negative. You know, the taskmasters, they put the Israelites in slavery, and so on and so forth. So at least from Exodus onward, you have a very negative portrayal of Egypt. But as often happens in world history, you know, the nation that is now your enemy, you know, a few decades or centuries

later, they become a possible ally. I mean, we see this happen even in the 20th century, where uh nations that are antagonistic oh all of a sudden you know they become allies against a common enemy this happens uh throughout ancient history as well most obvious example that ever in in a scope of history it happened rather quickly um imagine uh you know poland and germany both being concerned about russia right yeah like now that now that's a weird one like it wasn't that long ago where russia and poland both very concerned about germany right yeah sure sure or we ally ourselves with with russia and the war's over and then you have the cold war beginning so pretty quick yeah pretty

quick yeah so there's a there's a shuffling of the uh the categories of enemy and ally pretty rapidly in modern as well as in ancient history now what's happening in the time of isaiah is well you've got you know the enemy of my enemy is is uh how's that work the enemy of my enemy is my friend man is my friend yeah so you got it's got israel both north and south they're concerned about the enemy the common enemy of the assyrians so who you're going to get to be on your side well anybody, basically. And part of the anybody in Isaiah's day would have been the Egyptians. So you have the Israelites leaning toward the Egyptians, constantly looking toward Egypt for help, or at least thinking about looking to Egypt for help against the Assyrian and then later the

Babylonian invasions. So one of the messages in chapter 19 is, to put it quite simply, don't do it. Don't rely on Egypt. Don't lean in faith toward Egypt, because they will disappoint you. And the reason they'll disappoint you is because they themselves are going to be at war. They're going to be, their economy is going to collapse. They're not going to have any kind of leadership. Their advisors are going to be fools. All this kind of stuff is going to be heaped up by Isaiah as he goes through basically the, it's kind of like this description of Egypt as just kind of coming apart in every way, economically, politically, religiously. But all of this is for a purpose, as we'll see, because the purpose is basically for them to, once they are

undone, to redirect their worship toward the God of Israel. And this kind of worldwide picture of all the nations coming together to worship the one true God. So anyway, that's where we're going with us. It starts out here with, it starts with just an oracle concerning Egypt, and then it jumps right into it with the image of God, Yahweh, as a cloud rider. Behold, the Lord is riding on a swift cloud and comes to Egypt, and the idols of Egypt will tremble at his presence, and the heart of the Egyptians will melt within them. And I will stir up Egyptians against Egyptians, and they will fight each against another and each against his neighbor city against city and kingdom against kingdom and the spirit of the egyptians within them will be emptied out and i will confound

their council and they will inquire of the idols and the sorcerers and the mediums and the necromancers and i will give over the egyptians into the hand of a hard master and a fierce king will rule over them declares the lord god of host so this is uh this is an interesting start here where he says, look, the Lord is riding on a swift cloud and comes to Egypt. So if you're familiar with or have heard of the Ugaritic literature, that's where you have an image of Baal as one of their chief gods. You have El as kind of the head of their pantheon. And so what's fascinating is that very commonly in this Ugaritic literature,

you have this image of the god Baal being a cloud rider. He rides upon the clouds. And I think this is fascinating because this is pretty common in the Old Testament, where you'll have basically them using that same kind of imagery, kind of stealing it from them, saying, oh, no, no, no, Bale's not the cloud rider. God is the cloud rider. So they're basically, they're in an undermining sort of way, they're borrowing this, but at the same time, they're undermining it because they're saying, no, no, Bale's not the guy.

The Lord is the one who is the cloud rider. So his steed that he rides upon is a cloud, and he's coming down to Egypt. And when he gets there, you've got the idols of Egypt. And the hearts of the Egyptians, they're all trembling, and they're all melting, melting within them. I love the, so the Hebrew word here that's translated as idols, we've seen it in other contexts. You say it as Elohim. Now, if that sounds like Elohim, that's on purpose. So listen to this. This is from one of the Psalms.

The Elohim, the gods, the peoples, are Elalim. That is, they are nothing. So the Elohim are Elalim. The gods are nothing. So these are like fraud gods, I guess is one possible way to translate this. They're idols, yes, but I like something more like the no gods or something like that. And they're trembling. The hearts of the Egyptians are melting within them. Why? Because God shows up. And when he shows up, you have this long description of everything that's going to happen,

a lot of which is basically civil war, Egyptians against Egyptians, kingdom against kingdom. And if you know anything about Egyptian history, you know this actually happened a lot. You had the north against the south, the upper Egypt against lower Egypt. And sometimes they'd be controlled by the same guy. Sometimes you had the upper controlled by one guy, the lower controlled by another guy. He had a lot of back and forth power plays that happened throughout Egyptian history. So this is a description basically of the unity of the kingdom of Egypt coming apart, collapsing under civil war. And also the people that they would look to for advice, for counsel.

Well, all of that is going to come to nothing. They can turn to their sorcerers and the mediums and the necromancers, but all of them are not going to be able to help them. And then it concludes by saying that they're going to be ruled over by a hard master, a fierce king, and not sure who this is. You can check the commentaries. You'll find a list of five or six possible candidates for that. Whoever it was, the point is clear. Egypt is going to be disintegrated. No more unity.

No help from all of its counselors. The gods of the Egyptians are going to tremble in the presence of the one true God. And at times they're going to be hard for the Egyptians because they're going to be ruled over by a taskmaster. Kind of an irony there, given what they did to the Israelites centuries before. Yeah, I mean, the major point here is that this is not going to be a good ally. This is not the answer. right so if you were thinking like well maybe we'll just and we'll join up with egypt y'all like that's not gonna work like they got they're gonna have their own problems to deal with this is

they're not your savior that's that's the big thing it's like you're gonna look to egypt for salvation um well you have to wait a while there is gonna be one that comes out of egypt that is your salvation but that's not that's not happening quite yet so uh yeah this is when i and when you hear that this uh this is just my head paints pictures sometimes but um when you have like these no gods like you know trembling at his presence in my mind like you have okay god's gonna come and you think about like the idea here is that war is coming right i mean and so it's like he's gonna ride in the clouds but also like you think about loud warfare and like there's gonna be all these horses and chariots and all this kind of stuff involved and i just picture

like these idols which are nothing more than just like carved objects just like almost like a like a statue in the midst of an earthquake just being like just teetering back and forth that can't do anything like it's just like it might just fall over like and you're like oh my gosh my idol's trembling you're like yes it's because it's like oh nothing dude it's like a wooden thing and if you shake the house the idol shakes and uh that's this is the great shaking of of egypt and yeah the gods are included in this they are not going to be standing strong uh they're not going to be out in uh making your defense or anything like that they're just gonna shake like every other piece of furniture in your house yeah it makes me think of the uh the narrative of when in samuel

when the philistines captured the ark of the covenant and took it back to the the temple of their god and they find him you know first morning he's on his face in front of the ark and the next morning his head's chopped off his hands are are chopped off so he falls over in the presence of the of the one true god and that's kind of you know an extension of that image here they're they're trembling because you know what are they well they're nothing they're false they're they're they're false gods they're they're no gods yeah that's that's the best thing about that is that these kind of gods you can literally knock them over and they can't get themselves back up they I'll wait for you to come and pick them up.

What kind of God is that? Yeah, right. Can't even get up. A God who needs our help is not much of a God, right? No. Oh, get the God off the ground. Fell down. It's not a good God.

No, and then we, it's sort of a segue into verse 5, because we're going to hear about the Nile. And the Nile for the Egyptians isn't just, you know, a useful river. It's not like just a, you know, maybe the Mississippi isn't the best comparison here. But yeah, I mean, the Mississippi is great for a lot of things, right? Especially for traffic and trading, transportation. Very useful for lots of different ways for the economy of America. Well, the Nile was certainly that, but it was a lot more than that.

I mean, this was the life of Egypt was the Nile. If you take the Nile away and Egypt ceases to be the breadbasket of the ancient world – It's just another desert, man. Yeah, it's just another desert. Yeah, so the annual flooding of the Nile was the only reason that Egypt reached the preeminence that it did because they had this reliable source of water and thus reliable source of their crops every single year. Deserts are a wild thing. You have to understand this.

So I just recently was in the desert. We went to Arizona and had to drive all the way through New Mexico, which, by the way, most of New Mexico, there's nothing going on. Fuel up before you leave town. Get your gas. It might be a while. While it's available. And I didn't do that.

So I had to stop at this one gas station that was just price gouging like crazy because they knew that they were the only game in town so there was a there was a supply and demand issue uh they had to supply i had to demand and they they knew it but uh but anyway so i went in there and there was this is out in the middle of the desert man and it's just a road and a gas station and nothing else tumbleweeds and and that's it and uh there's a sign because i was like well we're gonna use the bathroom right here and there's a sign that said we haul our water 70 miles uh so be courteous and then i get in there and on the sink there's another sign says the same thing we haul our water 70 miles be courteous then it says no washing your feet

in the sink which is like the most desert sign ever like well i mean i wasn't gonna but i mean I guess people do. You know the way the law works, Dan? I mean, you didn't even think about washing your feet in the sink until you saw that sign. You're like, I don't know. I mean, I guess this is for people that are wearing sandals a lot and stuff, and they're like, well, you ripped my feet off.

I don't know what it's for, but you're like, what? But it was because you forget, you know, you live where I live, or you live, Chad. You know, you're just like, yeah, it's fine. I just turned the faucet on. There's no big deal. It's just water. but then you get the desert even in 2025 you go to this gas station and they're like there ain't

no water around here okay like we don't have plumbing in this sense like we have plumbing but we have to fill our water vessel and we had to bring it from somewhere else there's no pipes bringing it to us a little bit of that growing up not because we were in a desert because we we didn't have a well we had a cistern so we every water that every bit of water we used in the house for from the the toilet to the kitchen sink to the bathroom we to drinking we hauled it in from town so i can remember many times when i was growing up dad telling me you know don't waste the water yeah you gotta haul it in yeah so now the whole point here is that uh egypt is a place in the desert that is that has the uh the corner market on all the water like that's why they're

so great right i mean it's it's very important that they like hey we have access to water unlike a lot of other places that don't you know and uh and this makes them unique and so like yeah the nile and they're also like they uh this was seen as as far as i understand it anyway um that the nile almost had like a um a god-like quality to it in and of itself sure sure it was deified like a lot of natural objects well in the ancient world but certainly in egypt you know like the sun and frogs a lot of a lot of elements in creation flora fauna were considered to be either deities or at least icons of deities and the nile was like that too yeah if somebody was going to try to fight egypt over control the nile this would this is like a bright red line for them

for sure right yeah which then underscores as we see in verse five and following why when bad things happen to the nile bad things of necessity are going to happen to the egyptians so he says the waters of the sea will be dried up and the river will be dry and parched its canals will become foul and the branches of the not of egypt's nile will diminish and dry up reeds and rushes will rot away there will be bare places by the nile on the brink of the nile and all that is sewn by the nile will be parched will be driven away and will be no more so a lot of agricultural imagery there and agricultural diminishment and destruction and then he goes on to highlight something else about the Nile, fishing. He says, the fishermen will mourn and lament all who cast

a hook in the Nile, and they will languish who spread nets in the water. So we got the fishing, but not only that, we got more, because the workers in combed flax will be in despair, and the weavers of white cotton, those who are the, well, the pillars of the land, or you could translate that Hebrew with a slight emendation into workers in cloth or weavers. So pillars of the land, or if another alternate Hebrew reading is correct, the workers in cloth, whoever it is, will be crushed, and all who work for pay will be grieved. So you kind of got, you get, everything's really around the Nile in one way or another, but it's focused upon agricultural loss, and then fishing loss, and then what you might call, I guess, industrial loss,

people who work in in flax and and make the cotton the message is is obvious this is like an agricultural devastation but it's an economic devastation like it's so the agriculture for egypt is all connected to the nile because they can grow things because they have access to water right so they and all this stuff along the nile um they this is where their they have their food supply comes from uh whether that's just literally pulling fish out of the nile or it's uh having water to to have other kinds of animals drink uh and then of course the whole economic boom that was egypt is directly connected to the fact that they have all they have the nile and uh and so you even they can grow cotton they can they can do all these things well if you're not the nile

this is uh devastation for like all all of your things like starvation uh your agriculture's toast your your economic situation has declined uh precipitously it's a yeah it's a bad deal yeah i mean it'd be like you know wall street collapses and uh all the farmers there's a drought so the farmers can't grow the crops and uh you know all the factories shut down because of whatever the reason might be so in modern terms that's kind of what's what's going on here and then verse 11 uh picks picks up this oracle by talking about the uh the fact that you know they can't rely upon any of their counselors because the princes of zoan are utterly foolish so zoan was uh capital of egypt during at least uh quite a bit of the time of the israelite monarchy

so the princess of zoan they used to be the you know people who live the the folks in washington dc we americans would say the princess of zoan who are they well they're utterly foolish and the wisest counselors of pharaoh give uh you might translate this as brutish counsel it's stupid counsel is how esv translates but the the word that's used here in hebrew is uh like of a beast something like that so stupid or beastly brutish counsel might as well go to your horse and ask him what to do right yeah go talk to your horse for advice they're going to be as as wise as these human counselors how could you say to pharaoh i am a son of the wise a son of ancient kings where then are your wise men let them tell you that they might know what the lord of host has

purposed against egypt oh there you go so he's saying the he's saying the the quiet part out loud here all this stuff isn't just like oh what's you know it's having a tough time because things are happening with the nile and this and that no all this is from god he has purposed this against egypt and that's why all of this is happening and then he picks up with these princes of zoan again he says they become fools the princes of memphis are deluded Memphis, which is in Hebrew is called Nof, was a prominent political religious center for northern Egypt. So you got the Zohan people, you got the Memphis people here.

They're all fools. They're all deluded. Those who are the cornerstones of her tribes have made Egypt stagger. And the Lord has mingled within her a spirit of confusion, and they will make Egypt stagger in all its deeds, as a, caught the image here, as a drunken man staggers in his vomit, and there will be nothing for Egypt that head or tail, palm branch or reed may do. So Isaiah's used this whole image of palm branch and tail and reed before back in chapter 9. He said, chapter 9, he said, the Lord was going to cut off from Israel head and tail, palm branch and reed in one day.

and he defined that, he doesn't define it here, but back then he defined that as the elder and the honored man and the prophet. So all the leadership of Israel is going to become utterly foolish and unable to help the Egyptians as they deal with what the Lord of Hosts has purposed against them. Okay, so now we're going to switch to the rest of the chapter, which begins at verse 16. And here we have a whole list of in that day kind of statements. One, two, three, four, five, six. Six different times we're going to hear in that day. And some of this is negative. Some of this is judgment talk. But it's all leading to finally this promise of a most unexpected unity where Egypt and Assyria and Israel are all going to be worshiping the one true God.

So I'm going to go ahead and read this entire section. It's 16 through 25. In that day, the Egyptians will be like women and tremble with fear before the hand that the Lord of hosts shakes over them. And the land of Judah will become a terror to the Egyptians. Everyone to whom it is mentioned will fear because of the purpose that the Lord of hosts has purposed against them. In that day, there will be five cities in the land of Egypt that will speak the language of Canaan and swear allegiance to the Lord of hosts. One of these will be called the city of destruction. In that day, there will be an altar to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt and a pillar to the Lord at its border. It will be a sign and a witness

to the Lord of hosts in the land of Egypt. When they cry to the Lord because of oppressors, he will send them a savior and defender and deliver them. And the Lord will make himself known to the Egyptians and the Egyptians will know the Lord in that day and worship with sacrifice and offering. And they will make vows to the Lord and perform them. And the Lord will strike Egypt, striking and healing. And they will return to the Lord and he will listen to their pleas for mercy and heal them. And that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria and Assyria will come into Egypt and Egypt into Assyria. And the Egyptians will worship with the Assyrians in that day. I love this verse this is uh right at the end in that day israel will be the third with egypt and assyria

a blessing in the midst of the earth whom the lord of hosts has blessed saying this is crazy to listen to blessed be egypt my people and assyria the work of my hands and israel my inheritance i can't i can't help but think that when isaiah was was preaching these that there were a lot of jaws that were dropped as the people heard this kind of language. I mean, Egypt, my people? Are you serious? Assyria, the work of my hands? Right there alongside of Israel, my inheritance? I mean, if all that you had read in the Bible so far was Genesis and then Exodus, you'd be like, what? Egypt can't be the people of God.

Or if you know anything about what the Assyrians did, Assyria can't be the work of the Lord's hands. But there it is right there, this promise of a most unexpected union of all peoples represented here by Egypt and Assyria and Israel as the one people of God. Yeah, this is a problematic text. if uh i don't know if you don't think that so god means to uh include other people in his plan of redemption and salvation this would be problematic because he's intentionally including like you know your enemy like your historic foe uh in this and uh yeah it's pretty weird when you're like you know my elect people egypt yeah this is in first century language this would be like uh blessed be samaria my people and the gentiles the work of my hands and israel my

inheritance yeah i mean that's kind of the same that would that this would fit 700 years later within the first century context yeah and the thing that's important about this is this all has to do with and that's why it's there is the like who they're worshiping right and so there's a worship is directed in the right direction here so what is it that makes these his people well they have the right God this is like all it takes to be

God's people is just to have the right God I mean that's it yeah that's quite simply that's simply and completely it you get the right God and then you're God's people now it starts out here with

you know some judgment language talking about the Egyptians are going to be like women. That's a kind of a stereotypical biblical phrase for if you want to insult men in a biblical sort of way, you say they're going to be like women. And they're trembling with fear before the Lord because his hand is shaken over them. And then it starts right away with verse 17 talking about the land of Judah. It's going to make them a terror to the Egyptians. So it begins kind of with this image of God's invading and the Egyptians are trembling,

but they're also trembling in the presence of God's people, described here as Judah. It's sort of a, it's almost the image of invasion, but in reverse from what you see in the Torah and Joshua. So in the Torah and then in Joshua, Israel leaves Egypt and then invades a promised land, and then they conquer the promised land. here you have them leaving the promised land and evading egypt and conquering it so it's almost like they you have a complete reversal but this is also this is an image that we see elsewhere in isaiah i think it's chapter 9 where conquest a military conquest the image of military conquest is used to describe how the truth of god comes rolling into a nation and conquers that nation

So really what's going on, to put it in New Testament terms, what's going on in the book of Acts is a gospel invasion, we might say, beginning in Jerusalem, going to Judea, Samaria, to the uttermost ends of the earth, where people are conquered by not the sword, but by the gospel. They're brought into God's kingdom. So you might say that Acts is the New Testament counterpart to Joshua. In Joshua, the Israelites invade, they conquer. in Acts, the recipients of the gospel invade, putting that in air quotes, they invade and they

conquer by means of the gospel. So that's what's going on in those opening verses. So much so that there's a parallel here, because you have five cities in the land of Egypt, and you also have five cities that are conquered in the book of Joshua. So probably a parallel that's going on there. And they begin to speak the language of the land of Canaan. They're speaking Hebrew there in Egypt. There's going to be an altar in the midst of Egypt. And then you're going to have the Savior and this Defender showing up to deliver them. Well, who's that going to be? It's not Moses for sure. Yeah, it's going to be the new and the better Moses. I mean, This is the Messiah showing up, and he is bringing about this conquest, so the people begin to worship him.

And the worship is described in Old Testament terms, where they offer sacrifices and offerings, and they make vows, and they perform them. And then you have this, so the worship is right, and then you have this beginning of a unification, where highways are built up that lead from Egypt to Assyria, Assyria to Egypt. And we might say from Israel to Egypt as well. These highways are to allow for everyone to kind of come together. So get in the highway, travel, come together so much so that Egypt, along with Assyria, along with Israel, are all worshiping the one true God. And that leads finally to that concluding statement that we talked about where Egypt is called God's people. Assyria is called the work of his hands, and Israel is called his inheritance. I mean, this is what Paul picks up multiple times in the New Testament, right?

When he talks about God in Christ destroying the dividing wall, the wall of hostility between Jew and Gentile. All those walls are broken down, and God is making one great people, the spiritual Israel, that includes Israelites and Gentiles, all who can face faith in the Messiah. Yeah, I mean, this is a classic law before gospel kind of text, too, where you got judgment. But I love that you have this purpose for which he purposed, which is always a good thing what the Bible does. And so you have some judgment, but the purpose of that is to get you to this defender, this savior. This is the ultimate purpose. So God does this to get you here.

Preaches the law. The law is never like a goal in and of itself. This is meant to get you over to here. So the law is meant to get you to the gospel. By the way, never the other way around. So don't do that. People like that. Once you get the gospel, maybe you can go get some, you know.

You're saved, and then you go and get this. No, no, no. The law always gets you to the gospel. And you see that kind of clearly here, where it's like there's words of judgment, but there's a purpose behind them, which is to at the end to be able to say hey look at my people egypt which is like the most gospel-y statement ever like only the gospel could do that yeah yes for sure yeah that's striking

and healing uh and he does this so that he can show them mercy and and and get them healed striking and healing sounds like law gospel doesn't it that's law gospel yeah putting to death resurrecting uh all that uh is is pure law gospel language yeah so i love that chapter chapter 19 of isaiah because uh it's a it's building upon the torah story but it's reversing it and then it's so it's kind of pointing backward it's using that torah and gospel and joshua kind of imagery from that narrative but it does so in order to point forward to the work of the messiah the servant and isaiah is going to describe this much more as we get into the later chapters where He talks about the servant of the Lord being a light to the nations.

You know, it wasn't enough that he would just be the Savior of Israel. Come on. No, God's got much more in store for him than that. He's going to bring all of the nations to worship the one true God. Isaiah, out of all the prophets in the Old Testament, Isaiah preaches the universal work of Jesus the Messiah more explicitly and in greater profusion than any other Old Testament prophet does. now chapter uh chapter 20 which is next is uh extremely short it's uh let's see six verses so i think we can actually uh close up this episode with that this is the famous isaiah walking around barefoot and naked uh episode so in in the year that the commander-in-chief

who was sent by sargon sargon the king of assyria in that year when he came to ashdod and fought against it and captured it. So this is in the area of the Philistines. At that time, the Lord spoke to Isaiah, the son of Amoz. And God said this, go and loose your sackcloth from your waist. So take off your underwear, basically, and take off your sandals from your feet.

And he did so, walking naked and barefoot. So we, I mean, we've seen some, have seen and will seen the prophets do some kind of strange things. You know, Jeremiah does strange things. Ezekiel who is an eccentric guy he really does some strange things but here Isaiah does too so he goes around walking without any shoes on not any clothes on just walking around in his birthday suit now for what purpose well he goes on to explain verse three as my servant Isaiah

has walked naked and barefoot for three years as a sign and a portent against Egypt and Cush So shall the king of Assyria lead away the Egyptian captives and the Cushite exiles, young and old. He shall lead them all away naked and barefoot, with their buttocks uncovered, the nakedness of Egypt. Then they shall be dismayed and ashamed because of Cush their hope and of Egypt their boast. And the inhabitants of this coastland will say in that day, look this is what's happened to those in whom we hoped and to whom we fled for help to be delivered from the king of assyria and we how shall we escape so chapter 20 is kind of a kind of a continuation of the one of the themes we saw in chapter 19 don't rely on egypt come on

you know what's going to happen to them you see those naked people that are walking into captivity well that's what that's exactly what's going to happen to you if you put your trust in the egyptians you can't you can't trust you're going to trust barefoot naked people to deliver you come on the look what's going to happen to them and so isaiah's uh acting out of this this sign this prophetic sign of him being naked and walking around barefoot uh pretty graphic way of making sure that people who saw him and heard him realized what was what was in store for the people of kush and the for the people of uh of egypt yeah i mean the idea here is like don't have your salvation placed you know your hopes of salvation placed on a people who need

saving right and uh and now and we just heard that god in fact is going to do some saving but like You want to stick with the person doing the saving, not be joined up with the groups that are also in need of salvation themselves. And God is wild in this way where, man, I'm just not signing up to be a prophet. He will have them do things like, listen, I just want to put an illustration out there. So here's what it is. For three years, I just need you to walk around naked because I really want to drive this point home. and you're like, see, this is not a job that you want to sign up for.

He has prophets do this kind of stuff all the time. I remember there was this band that I used to listen to back in the day. It was a Christian band. They had a line, and I didn't really understand it at the time. I was like, what does that mean? I looked it up, and sure enough, it's a reference to this.

It was talking about the church and this kind of stuff. but uh one of the lines in the song was uh where are all the naked prophets oh yeah yeah i can see how they'll be confusing the first time you hear it yeah what we do like we need some naked prophets like and uh i think the name of that album was pray naked i think was the name of that record but uh yeah like this is a this is a wild uh job for god to give you you're like okay what what would you have me do what words do you want me to speak it's like no no words just uh i mean just act it out yeah you're just gonna be naked and um and yeah i suppose it's an

unforgivable unforgettable image where it's like hey if you're gonna trust if you trust in this you will be like me at some point yeah so hosea marries a prostitute uh ezekiel has to bake his food over dung jeremiah has to hide his underwear and break a an earthenware vessel and but isaiah i don't know he might have it worst he's got to walk around barefoot and naked for uh for a while to impress this upon the people yeah i'm i'm awfully glad that uh god just has me work for 1517 and not be a prophet because not a job that i not a job that i would want yeah that's One of those things where you find out, like, hey, long ago he spoke to the prophets, but now he speaks through Christ, and you're like, oh, good.

Yeah, glad all that's changed. Good. So that's not a job opening that's not happening? Okay, good. That's good to know. Not putting my application there. No. Well, all right.

Well, we are out of time. We will leave it there. We will get into Isaiah 21 next time. Circle back around Get some more Babylon talk Next episode Chad, I will see you then See you then