Arm into Person, a shift in metaphors of God…just midrash-ing today from da book of Isaiah: such a richly dense book of prophecies! Fun meditating today on the images God uses about Himself in Isaiah 53.

Reading Isaiah again: one quick take away from passage 53: The Arm of God becomes a Person. Nice metaphor shift at that point. Two types of images of God’s relation to earth. His outstretched Arm becomes His incarnation as a whole Person. The passage is very complex, but that much is clear in the poet prophet’s imagery-Arm becomes Person by the end of the passage. And then the Person is described in detail. The prophet poet starts with implying that he has seen the Arm of God, and then shows that He also saw the Person of God, which enters into humanity as weak ugly and bruised, and completely misinterpreted. Isaiah places the two images in the same vision, like a progressive image that God is revealing. An Arm becomes a whole body of a person. Body imagery is used throughout the passage-faces, arms and whole bodies. Fascinating passage to say the very least.

About the many faces (face speaks of the part of God which He reveals to humans—like when someone looks you in the face etc; Arm of His sovereignty etc; arm and face are used throughout this great book, one of the most erudite of the prophets) of God in relation to humanity. And the changing creative metaphors of His relationship to the world. Arm to Person is the simple version—like the whole shift from old to new stories or testaments. Nice two progressive metaphors in the big story God is telling about Himself. History is God’s autobiography, and He uses certain metaphors to express Himself. A Face, An Arm, and then a actual human Person. Cool progression. In this one, we trace the Arm into a human form to come. And it appears that nobody understood either of what the prophet is “reporting”. Hence the tone of lament in this passage. The prophet’s endless tears.

Also explains why all great gospel songs have lots of suffering and redemption, and even pre-praise (praise in advance of the fuller incarnation; praise ushers in, just as the Levites cross over the Jordan first, artistic praise and symbol, precede fuller incarnation… God symbolizes Himself first, then incarnates into that symbol!) side by side! Who believed the prophet’s report, which included both God’s Arm and His Personal incarnation into human form. What a packed passage from da Book.

I love spinning from the book, and a blast and a reckoning re-reading the major prophets this season! Isaiah is so subtly poetic as well. But Arm into Person makes total sense of the two big metaphors of God in history….