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Isaiah 8:1 "Then the Lord said to me 'Take a large tablet and write upon it in common characters, 'Belonging to Mahershalalhashbaz.' '"

 

The opening verses of Isaiah 8 are a bit strange. In this verse, God is telling Isaiah to make a large sign that is to read, in very easy to understand language, "Belonging to Magershalalhashbaz."  The use of "common characters" means people are meant to see and understand what the sign says. The name God tells Isaiah to write is the name Isaiah will give his son (Isaiah 8:3), who will be conceived shortly after this sign is made. The name is roughly translated as "speeding to the plunder, hurrying to the spoil." (https://www.bibleref.com/Isaiah/8/Isaiah-8-1.html). In verse 4 we learn the meaning of this bizarre instruction: "for before the child knows how to cry 'My father' or 'My mother,' the wealth of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria will be carried away before the king of Assyria." (Isaiah 8:4).

 

Thus, this tablet Isaiah is to make, the child that is to be born, and the child's name, are all part of a prophecy, one of the imminent destruction of Syria and Israel by Assyria. God instructed Isaiah to use "common characters" when writing out this tablet because He wanted anyone who read the inscription to know and understand exactly what it said. Presumably they did, but I have to think that they probably still did not understand what it meant (remember, the child whose name was inscribed was not even conceived when the sign was made!). Even if most knew what the name meant, and understood that it was a tablet belonging to someone named for "speeding to the plunder, hurrying to the spoil," I doubt they knew that meant they were speeding toward plunder and spoil. If God really wanted to warn them in no uncertain terms, He could have had Isaiah write "Israel and Syria are about to be conquered, spoiled, and plundered."

 

I think, though, the point is that it was already too late for warnings. God had given His people plenty of them through the prophets and through world events. If they were going to change, they would have already changed, one more explicit warning from a prophet would not have altered their behavior, in fact it may have caused them to "dig in" further, as we so often perversely do when someone tells us something we don't want to hear, especially about our misconduct.

 

The point of this tablet was, rather, to remind the people once the Assyrians came that God had warned them through Isaiah. Sometimes destruction has to happen before we turn back to God. Things that we thought were odd and didn't quite understand at the time, come starkly into focus after the fact. We then remember all the things God was trying to tell us, yet we failed to heed, and hopefully return to the One who was trying to warn us. So often history only makes sense when we look back on it, but if we're honest with ourselves we also see that God was trying to tell us in the moment to change before disaster struck.

 

God has been giving us very obvious messages over the last few years, messages that many more each day are coming to heed. Some people saw for years prior to COVID that something was wrong; some only saw it when COVID began or as it continued well past the point of reason; and others took longer, needing to look back over the last five years for the puzzle pieces to fit together in their minds. But so many still do not (or will not) see that there is something wrong! They will admit, now, that people we should have been able to trust lied to us, and that draconian precautions people were forced to take were pretty much pointless, and thought up on the fly by the very people who were lying to us; and yet still they shrug their shoulders, tell us that it is all water under the bridge, and go right on with their lives without pondering why God allowed all of that misery (misery that is still ongoing for many). God is still calling to us, there are messages in "common characters" all around us if only we would stop shrugging our shoulders at them and instead ask God what they mean! I don't know if it is too late to avoid the destruction as it was for Israel and Syria when Isaiah made his tablet, but it is never too late to mitigate it with our prayer and sacrifice.

 

The other day while walking I saw on a utility box a large sticker that had a big swastika on it. I was so shocked (as I'm sure I was meant to be) that I read the text, which basically attributed hatred, and the swastika, to others, saying we must fight and resist "those people". But I don't see those "others" posting any swastikas, only this group that thinks of itself as the necessarily resistant "good guys". (Later in my walk, I told some cops  about the sticker and they destroyed it.) I think this sticker might be something like Isaiah's tablet. The use of such a hateful symbol in an effort to paint others as hateful shows, to me, that things have gone too far, at least for the group who posted it. They are living in a false reality in which they have created "straw man" enemies in their minds, righteously judged these "others" they are sure exist and think just as they think they do, found them guilty, and thus rationalize using any means necessary to thwart them, including using a swastika to gin up anger, fear, and hatred against them. These people are in a very dangerous place, and they are taking our country with them!

 

I know people who would never post a swastika, but who will not listen (it seems they really cannot, somehow) to reasonable arguments or statements from the "other side". If these people, who are otherwise rational, refuse to listen and engage, how much worse is it for the people, probably youth, whose minds have been so warped by hatred that they are willing to post a swastika while attributing it to their enemies? That sticker might as well have said "speeding to the plunder, hurrying to the spoils" to me. Hateful ideologies that much embedded in people can really only be defeated by chastisements, which are already happening, with worse, I believe, coming.

 

A few years ago someone, possibly the same person who posted the sticker, spray painted "F*** Faith" on another utility box. There are also smaller messages all over town cursing the police, and otherwise expressing hatred, there was even one outside of my home church after the Dobbs decision. The escalation in hatefulness of the rhetoric and the graduation from spray cans and small stickers to a large, professionally made sticker, indicates to me that this person is not alone in thinking the way he thinks, he has found a group and they are radicalizing each other. This is in a small, quiet, lovely suburb! I wonder if his parents know what he's thinking and doing! To me, this all means that we are still going in the wrong direction, and is a portent that great suffering is imminent. We are "speeding to the plunder, hurrying to the spoil."