40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Isaiah 28:21-29:10 (Episode 470)

Episode Date: July 15, 2025

God is about to do a strange and alien deed. Why makes Jerusalem holy? And unbelief is sometimes astounding. 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: Sinner Saint by Luke Kjolhaug 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 and check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. And, of course, while you're over there, make sure you check out everything else that 1517 is doing. All the articles, all the academies, all the events. Hey, just because, you know, we only do a couple events a year that, you know, 1517 puts on, doesn't mean that 1517-type folk aren't roaming the nation speaking at a place near you. Could be the case.

So go over to the events page and scroll down. It could be like five miles from your house. Who knows? Chad could be speaking, and you wouldn't know anything about it. You just wouldn't know unless you go to the events page. So go check it out. While you're over there, make sure you hit that donate link if you have not done that before and become a contributor.

Help us keep all this content free. Thank you very much to those of you who have done that. You do make it all possible. Chad, we are in Isaiah chapter 28. Well, we have a little bit of good news, you know, in some of Isaiah 28. Mostly a covenant with death being annulled, which is something you want. All of humanity has made this sort of covenant with death. You showed up for work, and you're going to get paid.

And Paul says, well, the bad thing about that paycheck is that paycheck is death, and it always pays on time. Friday rolls around, and you get that check. And, uh, that's the contract you've signed. And, uh, yeah, we got that news that the covenant with death will be annulled. Uh, the, the agreement with Sheol, that, that won't stand. And so that was, uh, that was sort of some positive stuff there in Isaiah. Yeah, it was all, it was, it was all good.

I mean, we got, uh, we got that. We got the, uh, image of the, the cornerstone that the God, the God is going to lay and, uh, all the good stuff he's planning to do for his people. Now, where we're at now, which is verse 21, well, back up to verse 20, you know, there's going to be some suffering, going to be some of the Lord's judgment as well that's part of this. And that's what we're about to get to. We wrapped up last time with verse 20 talking about how the bed is too short to stretch oneself on and the covering too narrow to wrap oneself in. You can't get comfortable. The bed's too short, not enough blanket. because God is about to do something that is going to be an alien work,

is the way that Isaiah describes it, a strange work. So let me read verse 21 for you. Actually, I'll read 21 and 22. For the Lord will rise up as on Mount Perizim, as in the valley of Gibeon he will be roused, to do his deed, strange is his deed, and to work his work alien is his work now therefore do not scoff let your bonds be made strong for i have heard a decree of destruction for the lord god of host against the whole land

so we start out this verse with a couple of uh geographical and historical references and isaiah well not just isaiah but a lot of the prophets love to do this they like expect you to know what they're talking about. Oh, you know, like that thing on Mount Perisim. You know, the Valley of Gibeon. We're like, yeah, can you help me out here a little bit? You know, it might be strange to us, but, you know, if somebody says, you know, like D-Day

or, you know, like Pearl Harbor. Well, you don't have to, like, for most people, you know, unless they're not great in history, you don't have to stop and explain, okay, you know, D-Day, you know, Pearl Harbor. You can just throw that out and people are like, oh yeah, yeah. Well, it's kind of like that with these biblical references. So Mount Perizim is going to take us all the way back to 2 Samuel chapter 5. And this is right after David's become

king, and he's going to defeat the Philistines. And the place is named Baal Perizim, because Perizim is from the Hebrew root meaning to break out, because the Lord has broken out against David's enemies, against the Philistines. So that happened at Mount Perizim. So that's the geographical and historical reference there. But he also makes reference to the Valley of Gibeon. Now that takes us even further back to Joshua chapter 10. This is when Joshua and the Israelites, they've gone into the promised land, you know, they're taking on all the various ites. And this particular case is where God helps the armies of Israel by defeating the Amorites. He throws is these hailstones down from heaven.

That's also the context where Joshua prays that the sun will stand still. So that's what the Valley of Gibeon is in reference to. Now, what unites both of those? Well, Mount Perizim, Mount Gibeon, this is where God went to work, went to war for his people. His work, his deed in those cases

was to defeat Israel's enemies, right? You might think of that as God's proper work, the work that is proper to his very being because he's for his people so he fights for for his people so what we have here is a is a contrast that's set up because isaiah says the lord's going to rise up as on mount parisine and he's going to be roused as in the valley of gibeon and he's going to do this to do his deed and to work his work but it's a strange deed and it's an alien work. Why? Because what God is going to do is he's going to have to bring judgment upon his own people. He's going to have to go to war against them, fight against them, not with a

purpose, of course, of destroying them, but of, we might say, destroying the flesh or destroying the sin or destroying rebellion, bringing them down in order that he can lift them up. So these historical geographical references set up this contrast in those particular cases that are referred to god did his proper work and now he's going to do his not improper work but his alien work so sometimes you'll hear theologians talk about god's you know his his proper work or his alien work and that's what they're talking about this actually is based upon the language of isaiah 28 21 yeah yeah alien as in uh yeah not uh wrong or or bad i heard once one time someone that was was talking about the love of god right and um and they said so god is love now of course that

the scriptures say that that god is love like uh that's the thing and then it says but he is also wrath and i said no wrong verb no no no uh like that's that doesn't it doesn't say that uh and that's sort of what you're getting at here is that like salvation is is part of who god is in the sense that it's not just something that he does but it's like intrinsic to him like this so God is love, and because God is love, and this is why you get John 3.16, for God so loved the world that who God is caused him to act in such a way. This is what love is. The love of God is the motivating force behind the incarnation.

Now, God is wrath. You're not quoting anything in the Bible when you say that. Now, the wrath of God is a thing, and maybe you think you're helping people out by being like, just so you know, you know, he's yin and yang or whatever, but that's not exactly right. Now, what is true is does God have wrath? Well, he does.

So God certainly has poured out his wrath, but that's an alien work. So it's not his normative work. It doesn't flow out of him the same way that love does. It's almost as if God has wrath when our sin necessitates it, but he'd rather not. Yes. God wouldn't rather not be love. He wouldn't rather not love you. That's not—this is not a thing.

But he would rather not pour out his wrath. And you see this all over Scripture, that God's like, I am trying hard to not do this. Yeah, we've talked before about how the Israelites would—is the exact language something like incite the wrath of God? It's something like that. It's not like—it needed help for this to get going. It wasn't like God is just instantly wrathful or essentially wrathful. Of course he's not. In fact, he's – what's the one of the more common designations for God in the Old Testament?

He's slow to anger. Yeah. He's quick to love. I mean, he's not even quick to love. He just is love. You know what it is? He's slow to anger. You don't have to do anything to provoke the love of God.

Mm-hmm. God just loves you because he does. I know. it's confusing because there's sometimes where you're profoundly unlovable. But yet God loves you anyway, because he does, because that's who he is. The wrath of God is something that must be provoked. Yeah. I think sometimes we think of like, we're like Leah and Jacob.

You know, I'm going to, now my husband will love me, right? She keeps having these kids, you know, named Reuben, Simeon, Levi, all of them saying, you know, well, maybe, maybe now my husband will love me. And we think, oh, I'm going to try really hard, do this really good thing, and now maybe God will love me. You don't really, you don't have to try. He loves you already. That's who he is. Okay, so, yeah, so if you ever hear pastors, theologians, or anybody else talk about God's alien work,

well, they've just lifted that right from Isaiah 28, 21. Yeah. So verse 22, following out of the heels of this, says, okay, God's going to do this alien, strange, work. So because this is happening, don't be scoffing. Don't scoff and don't let your bonds be made strong. In other words, don't react to this by saying, whatever, or I don't care. I'm just going to continue in my sinful rebellion. Don't make your bonds stronger. Don't handcuff or tie yourself even more firmly to that against which God is going to react in this alien work. because, Isaiah says, he's heard a decree of destruction

from the Lord God of hosts against the whole land. So, what do you do? What do you do when you have this decree of destruction from God? Well, you run to God. That's what you do. You get away from the wrath of God by running to the God of love, who's always, always ready and willing to receive you. Okay, so that's the end of that section.

Now the rest of this chapter, which is verse 23 through 29, we're going to have a, I guess you could call it a parable of sorts. So Isaiah gives us, of course, the parable of the vineyard. He talked about the vineyard also, I think that was the last chapter, something like that. Well, this is sort of another agricultural kind of vineyard, a parable. Even though it's, I mean, it's sort of, the message is a little bit implicit. And there's a couple of different directions that you can take this.

But let me, I'm going to read all those verses and then we'll just talk about it for a couple of minutes. So he starts out by basically saying, hey, pay attention. Give ear, hear my voice. Give attention, hear my speech. Does he who plows for sowing plow continually? does he continually open and harrow its ground of course the answer to that is no when he's leveled at surface he does not scatter does he not scatter dill so cumin and put in wheat put put in wheat and rose and barley in its proper place and and emmer i had to look up emmer i had

no idea what ember was it's a kind of grain anyway also this could also be spelt which i also had to anyway ember spelt as the border for he is rightly instructed that is talking about the farmer here he's rightly instructed his god teaches him all right so that's kind of the first part then he goes on dill is not threshed with a threshing sledge nor is a cartwheel rolled over cumin but dill is beaten out with a stick and cumin with a rod does one crush grain for bread no he does not thresh it forever when he drives his cart wheel over it with his horses he does not crush it this also comes from the lord of hosts he is wonderful in counsel counsel and excellent in wisdom all right so i i don't think this is like when i first read this first time uh i was like

okay i don't i sort of get this and i sort of don't get this but got a lot of things going on here. Most of what's being communicated is basically this. Farmers know what they're doing. They're not going to get the tractor out there with a plow and just plow and plow and plow and plow. There's a time to plow, right? You get your plowing done and then what do you do? Well, then you sow your seed. And then he goes through all the various examples of what you're going to be sowing. He put everything in kind of its proper place. So farmers know this. They know what to do because, as this section, first section says, this farmer basically has God as his teacher, right? He's rightly instructed. God teaches him how to do

this. So the farmer knows that there's a time to plow. He also knows that there's a time to reap, to harvest. And then the second part of this is explaining, you know, after you have the harvesting, after everything is pulled in, there's also certain ways that you get the grain to where it needs to be so you don't a threshing sledge is like this wooden platform with uh sharp objects like rocks that are underneath it and it's pulled by an animal and then the farmer or whoever would stand on top of it give it some weight and the basically idea there is to separate begin to separate the the grain itself from the the husk so it's part of the process but you don't do that to dill. You don't drive a cartwheel over cumin. Then he goes on to talk about how certain things

are threshed, certain things are taken care of. And this also, he says, this also comes from the Lord who is wonderful in counsel and excellent in wisdom. Now I think in sort of a simple sort of way, one way you could take this parable is to say, listen, farmers know what they're doing because they pay attention to what God has taught them, with the implication being, you should do the same. God is trying to teach you something, so pay attention to him. I think that's one way, kind of a simple way we can take this. Another way that doesn't contradict that, but just builds on that,

is to see how this parable is leading us into, it builds off what came before it, but it's also leading into what we're going to encounter in the next chapter. and what we're going to kind of next chapter is basically the message that God is going to do some plowing in Israel and plowing of course is a is a violent thing it breaks up the blades go in it breaks up the soil but God is not going to do this forever he's going to do what is necessary in Israel he's going to plow the land if you will but he's not going to destroy the land he's only doing this because it's part of the process of

bringing Israel to where he wants him to be. He's going to do his alien work in order that he can do his proper work. So that's kind of the two different ways, two complementary ways that I think this parable is taking us. Yeah, God is very much always breaking down so he can build back up. So when the time comes, he's like, all right, gonna have to do something here that usually means the beginning of that is hard the beginning of that is like i have to break it all down i have to reduce it all to

nothing and then i have to build it back up from nothing and this is it seems like the work that isaiah is getting them ready for like hey there's gonna be a little bit of a little pressure a little pain coming yeah but sorrow lasts for the night but joy comes in the morning kind of stuff right Yeah, yeah. I mean, this kind of the New Testament talks about pruning. It's kind of building on the same idea. Anything that involves cutting or breaking open or plowing or threshing, I mean, all these are violent kinds of actions. but i mean they're also they're also necessary i mean it's often an example that's often used is you know if uh if you have a horrible infection in your in your hand or your foot or whatever and it's got gangrene and it's like it can't be healed what what what is the option well the only option really at that point is is amputation which of course is a violent action it's a terrible

thing but the loss of that hand or foot or whatever it is if that's going to preserve your life well then it's it's got it's what has to be done in the end it will be best that way so i mean all of these are just various different kinds of images for more or less what i mean this isn't just what was happening in israel it's what happens in our lives still today god prunes he plows he breaks open. He does all these alien works in our lives, always with the goal of, through this painful discipline, bringing us forth to where he wants us to be. All right, well, that is chapter 28. Moving now to Isaiah 29, we're going to hear about Ariel, which is another name for the city of Jerusalem. So before I read this, there's a couple different ways that you can understand

Ariel. It can either mean lion, like lion of God, which is one way this is explained. Another meaning is an altar hearth. And I mean, I suppose you could take this either way, kind of the meaning of the name either way in reference to Jerusalem. I think altar hearth fits better here. That word is also used in Ezekiel 43, 15, where it means altar, altar hearth. And I think basically the message that's being communicated by the use of this nickname for Jerusalem is that in Jerusalem, where the altar is located, Jerusalem itself is going to become an aerial, that is an altar hearth, a place of ashes and the painful fire of necessary destruction before she is ready to be rebuilt.

But if you want to take it as a line of God, you can do the same thing. You just have to switch the metaphor around. What makes Jerusalem Jerusalem? What is it that makes it? Is it just like that acreage? That's what's important. Or is it that that's where God is?

Or is it where God's supposed to be? And why is God there? Well, that's where the temple is, and that's where the altar is. And so Jerusalem doesn't matter if God's not there. It's just another place. And so it makes sense to sort of – especially in this context where you're sort of crying out about – It's the same thing that Jesus does when he says, oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem. It's that same kind of feel to it.

What is the attachment to it? Well, it's this is the place, the city of God, and it's only the city of God because that's where the altar is, and that's where God has said he would be. You could say Jerusalem, or you could say sort of place of the altar or whatever. You're saying the same thing. uh you're just you're just near you're just uh you're zooming in further right to say like what's important about this yeah i mean it's the same reason jerusalem is sometimes called uh zion right yeah yeah it's because that's because zion is where god has i mean even though technically it's mount moriah mount zion and in moriah are kind of collapsed into one because that's where

the temple is right there's city of david another another way this place and that could have that would have been true of any city god could have picked anywhere the point is like the only thing that makes something holy or set apart is if god sets it apart uh by by his presence and then then it's set apart but that could that could be anywhere yeah it was eden it's jerusalem it can be wherever now it's sunday morning at wherever church you go to and you got the body and blood of christ on the altar there it is that's exactly what the author of hebrew says you have come not you will come you have come to mount zion yeah yeah this is every time you get together with the body of christ guess where you are boy you're in the new and better jerusalem you're in mount

you're in mount zion you're exactly where and that holy place where god wants you wants you to be yeah i mean and that's this is what jesus himself prophesied in john chapter four when he talks to a woman at the well a time is coming and has now come when it's not going to be in jerusalem it's not going to be here at your samaritan mountain mount gerizim but it's going to be where the father gathers his people together and they worship in spirit and truth it's funny i always think that interaction is funny because the she asked this question and there's a right answer for like a little while longer so jesus has to do this thing where he's like man you want to talk about a question that's about to be irrelevant uh let me let me go ahead and give

you the the right answer that's about to expire yeah exactly yeah except for another uh year or two yeah i mean at the most yeah right at this moment let me tell you this is the answer but also here very shortly who cares yeah and the irony is that when this was finally written down by john yeah that time had long passed yes yeah so for now uh and certainly in in isaiah's time yeah ariel was the the altar hearth place of god because that's where his temple was so we start out here with ah ariel ariel the ah is our hebrew word that could also be translated woe and i can't decide which one fits better here there is certainly a a woeful note to this but anyway ah or woe this ah denotes like there's some sadness involved here right yes this is a

it's a negative yes this is not the ah that you uh you say when you see a cute puppy video on instagram or something oh this is more like uh or it's not even like an like an awe uh awesome kind of thing like uh where you might uh you know i don't know if you said ah the rolling hills of of ireland how i how i long for them or something like that it's not like that it's it's man jerusalem exasperation yeah yeah frustration exasperation just like oh god ariel ariel the city where david encamped add year to year let the feast run their round so you keep on doing your worship the way that you think god is going to be pleased god goes on to say yet i will distress ariel and there shall be moaning and lamentation

and she this city will be to me like an ariel and that's why i think altar hearth fits so well here because if this meant lion of god i don't i don't i mean i suppose you could kind of claim that jerusalem has become lion like in her uh you know response to god but it doesn't seem to fit the metaphor here. It fits very much more nicely, I think, with the message here, if it's an altar hearth. So the whole city is going to be ashes, we might say, mourning and lamentation. Why? Well, verse three tells us, God says, I will encamp against you all around and will besiege you with towers and I will rage siege works against you. This is kind of funny because What is most likely in the historical background of this is when the Assyrians under Sennacherib come and they besiege the city of Jerusalem.

We heard about that when we covered 1 Kings, whenever that was. And we're going to hear about that again, because a lot of that material in 1 Kings that concerned Hezekiah and the Assyrian siege in Sennacherib, And Isaiah is going to retell that story in his own book in nine, eight chapters, whatever it is coming up. But that's probably what's being referred to. But what's kind of funny to me is he doesn't say, and the Assyrians will encamp against you. God says, I will encamp against you. Why? Because, well, they're basically the tool of God in this case. So God, that is using the Assyrians, will encamp against you, besiege you with towers, rage siege works.

against you. All right. And what's going to happen? Verse four says, you will be brought low. How low you might say? Well, how's this for lowness? From the earth, you shall speak. And from the dust, your speech will be bowed down. Your voice shall come from the ground, like the voice of a ghost. And from the dust, your speech shall whisper. It's just such a striking image there you're like you're walking around and you're like do you hear somebody seem like i hear somebody where's that voice coming from oh yeah it's it's from the ground this whisper like the the voice of a ghost muttering from the ground that's how low jerusalem ariel is going to be it's going to be brought down okay then we have a surprise as as is you know that we need to come up with a term

for this, where you have this prophetic complete swing where you go from destruction to restoration, from death to life, from law to gospel. Verse 5 says, but the multitude

of your foreign foes, the ones we just heard about, they will be like small dust, which is kind of strange. I've never referred to small dust, but anyway, small dust. They're struggling in the English language to come up with another word

for dust that the Hebrew has here. The multitude of your foreign foes shall be like small dust, and the multitude of the ruthless like passing chaff. And bam, in an instant, suddenly, you will be visited

by the Lord of Hosts. Now this is a good visit. You will be visited by the Lord of Hosts with thunder, and with earthquake, and great noise, and whirlwind, and tempest, and the flame of a devouring fire and the multitude of all the nations that fought against Ariel, all that fight against her and her stronghold and distress her, what are they going to be like? It'll be like a dream, a vision of the night. It's when a hungry man dreams, behold, he's eating and he wakes up and

his hunger is not satisfied. Or a thirsty man dreams and he's drinking and he wakes faint with this thirst not quenched, well, so shall be the multitude of all the nations that fight against Mount Zion. So, going back to verse 5, I just read you 5 through 8. There's going to be this sudden reversal where you have Israel, first of all, depicted, Jerusalem depicted as speaking from the dust. Well, now, all these foreign foes, all the multitude of the ruthless, they're going to be like dust, like chaff. It's going to happen in an instant, suddenly. And what is this referring to? Well, it's referring to that same scenario that I described earlier. It's described in 2 Kings 19. We're going to hear about it again in Isaiah chapter 37. And this is when the angel of

the Lord, the messenger of the Lord, goes out and he strikes down 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians. And when people wake up in the morning, behold, dead bodies everywhere. So this is this famous overnight deliverance of Jerusalem when they were on the brink of destruction and God stepped in and did what God often does. Same thing he did to the Red Seas, same thing he did in all kinds of scenarios where you think all hope is lost, and then God shows up to demonstrate that hope has not been lost whatsoever he's there to do what could never be done otherwise so that the prose description of what god did the messenger shows up strikes down all these guys in poetry it's described as uh god coming in with thunder and earthquake and a great noise

and whirlwind and tempest and the flame of devouring fire this is typical hebrew kind of poetic images of God doing what God does when he comes and destroyed, destroys the foes and all these nations are compared to, uh, to a dream. It's like they, they, they were, they thought they had victory. They thought they were like a hungry man dreaming of eating or a thirsty man dreaming of drinking. They, you know, they could taste it. They thought they had it. And then it's all over. They wake up. It was all a dream all to stay a part of their imagination because of course

their victory was overcome by god's victory for israel the thing that's that's interesting about the beginning of this because it is you know and we i know we talked about it a little bit but uh why not why not just say jerusalem uh when you're talking if you're that's what you're talking about uh but instead god does this thing where i mean he's using this sort of name for jerusalem and say it'd be like um uh i don't know if god was about to really judge ashville north carolina and he said hey your name is about to really make sense right you're right yeah that would be that would be a great example yeah ashville yeah you will become what your name implies yes that's what it seems like this ariel thing is like hey i'm gonna call you this because

That's about to make a lot of sense that you would be called that. Yeah, yeah. That's a great analogy. All right, so we have Jerusalem brought low. We have them reduced down to ashes, to the ground. But in an instant, God is going to come and is going to rescue his people. All right, now you might say to yourself, well, you know, when that happens, when this miracle happens then everybody in ariel in jerusalem is going to be just

swept away by god's deeds and they're going to be you know waving the yahweh flag and head over heels uh in faith for for the lord well if you know anything about the scriptures you know that doesn't work that way i mean the israelites barely get away from the red sea before they're already belly aching rebelling uh miracles and you see this in the gospels too i mean i laugh it's really not funny but it just still cracks me up you know soon as jesus raises lazarus what are the uh what are the adversaries of jesus decide they need to do we gotta kill that guy now we have two people to kill now i gotta kill lazarus and jesus it's like do you do realize what he just did he just raised somebody from the dead

yeah dude unbelief you gotta understand something about unbelief is crazy it's uh it's it is unlike anything else that we just wrapped up the end of matthew that said this is something that hadn't stood out to me before but it's like so obvious is right there in the text the chief priest they they say we got to put some guards in front of this tomb now you start to get the impression that they think there's a decent there's not zero chance that this guy raises from the dead right um and so they said pretty crazy things up to that point anyway right well they've they've they've seen him make other people not dead so yeah you know maybe we should take and they know he said that he would so you know so you'd be like okay so they're nervous about that

and then the the soldiers when they come back after the resurrection they say yeah there's like This angel sitting on top of the rock, you know, like, yeah, he rose from the dead, a thousand percent, man. That's what happened. You know, what kind of unbelief is in like, all right, well, how much money would it take for you to say something different than that? Like, there's not like even this initial like, hey, where's the sackcloth? Where's the at? Who's got them? Get them out of storage.

Like, we need to repent and believe. Obviously, we got this terribly wrong. That's not even an inclination. It's just, okay, well, what's it going to take for you to lie about this and say that you're terrible at your job of guarding tombs and somehow his disciples snuck in? That's epic unbelief. It's crazy unbelief.

It reminds you of Pharaoh having all these plagues come and then being like, no, I'm not going to let your people. It'll just harden your heart, harden your heart, harden your heart until finally God hardens your heart. This is the thing about unbelief is that there is an insanity to it uh and so even in this situation that you're talking about you might think like oh well probably like repenting and then rejoicing and and all this stuff is going to happen but that never is the case no no doesn't doesn't happen unbelief is astonishing in that way yeah so he he goes on

from there to say uh astonish yourself you could also be translate that like be dumbfounded there's a number of ways you could do this so astonish yourselves and be astonished or dumbfound yourselves and be dumbfounded blind yourselves and be blind be drunk but not with wine stagger but not with strong drink in other words uh all right you're you're refusing to see this all right so be blind you know you're you're astonished okay be astonished you're drunk but you you're You're intoxicated on your own unbelief, rebellion, refusal to listen. The spiritual stupor that you're in. And why is this happening?

Or what is the result of this? He goes on to say, For the Lord has poured out upon you a spirit of deep sleep. Tardema in Hebrew, which is the same word that's used when, first time it occurs is when God puts Adam into a deep sleep and takes a rib from his side to make Eve. So God is going to pour out on you a spirit of this deep sleep and has closed your eyes. Who are the eyes?

The prophets. And he's covered your heads. Who are the heads? The seers. So I think when you get to the very end of that, you have to kind of go back and say, okay, well, what's really going on here? And it seems to me what's going on is the prophets, the seers, those who should be speaking the word of God, aren't speaking the word of God and they're impacting everybody else.

And so they're spreading blindness. They're spreading this spiritual intoxication. And then in response to this, God says, Oh, so you want to be spiritually asleep? There you go. I'm going to pour out upon you exactly what you want, the spirit of deep sleep, so that seeing you will not see,

and hearing you will not hear. So that's going to be their response to this. And he's going to build on this more as he goes on to verse 11. And that's exactly what we were talking about. I mean, Pharaoh hardens his heart, hardens his heart, hardens his heart. Then final plague, God hardens his heart, gives him what he wants. You get the same impression, by the way, with the chief priest at the resurrection of Christ, where it's like, man, God has really just turned.

At this point, you're just, it's not as though, there's two different kinds of unbelief. there's the unconvinced which is maybe just not convinced so like that person's like it doesn't make sense to me I'm unconvinced of that thing then there's the other thing where this is objectively true and you

actively say like I refuse to believe that I don't care how much evidence there is I don't care if I see someone risen from the dead or not I'm opposed to it being true and this is

And this can only be accounted for at that point where it's like, well, God has now given you over to your own hardness of heart and unbelief. And you see that this is the case here, where Isaiah expressly says that the Lord has poured out upon you a spirit of deep sleep. So it's like, well, you've wanted that for so long, and finally God's going to say, you know what? You don't have to fight anymore. I'm just going to give it to you. Yeah. And as confirmation of that, we'll get to these verses in the next episode. When you keep reading down to verse 13 and 14, both of those are quoted in the New Testament, one by Jesus and one by Paul, about people drawing near with their mouth, but their hearts are far from me, and the wisdom of the wise men shall perish.

Both of those are quoted within the New Testament. in response to the very people we're talking about here, the ones who heard, who saw. It was just like, no denying this, and yet they deny it. Turn away from the truth. Which Paul will say is the greatest form of judgment one can receive, is that God finally turned you over to your own hardness of heart and unbelief, that he sort of stops, right?

And that this is the worst thing that could happen to you. Yeah, definitely. all right well we'll leave it there we'll be back next episode to uh finish out the chapter and get into the next chad i will see you then all right see you then