Haftorah This Week
Welcome to Haftorah This Week, the place where you will find thoughts and reflections by CLAL faculty and associates on this week's Haftorah.
HAFTARAT KI TETZE
(Isaiah 54:1-10)
In this fifth Haftarah of comfort following Tisha B'av, Isaiah is chosen to express the movement form despair to hope. Once again, as is common among the prophets, Israel is God's love mate whom he has spurned for her faithlessness. The prophet tells his community that God's distemper is momentary, his love enduring.
For a little while I forsook you, But with a vast love will I bring you back. In slight anger, for a moment, I hid my face from you; But with everlasting kindness I will take you back in love --said the Lord your Redeemer.
(Isaiah 54:7-8)
For Isaiah and his generation, the great destruction and exile in 586 BCE was a defining moment of the bond between God and Israel. A people schooled in the belief that they were the chosen of the Lord could not but read the events of the destruction as an episode of Divine rage. How does a prophet navigate the sensitivities of a people so humbled and so abused by an angry God?
The prophet sustains God's just indignation upon his people's disloyalty, but the images speak further. God's anger is fueled not by hatred, but by love spurned. The metaphor of God as disappointed lover explains the severity of the destruction while it promises imminent hope for reconciliation. The prophet must soften the experience of the destruction, so that the people can begin to trust themselves and God again.
The anger in the prophet's language lasted only a split second--no matter that its consequences were so devastating. Indeed, God did not even act to destroy, but merely turned His face away for that fleeting moment. And like an angry lover who immediately regrets his jealous fury, God regrets His as well. The prophet interprets the destruction in a way that turns it toward hope and return. God has pledged never to release the waters of Noah again; those waters, like God's momentary hiding in disappointment and rage, are transcended by a new covenant.
For this to Me is like the waters of Noah: As I swore that the waters of Noah Nevermore would flood the earth, So I swear that I will not Be angry with you or rebuke you. For the mountains may move And the hills be shaken, But my loyalty shall never move from you, Nor my covenant of peace be shaken --said the Lord, who takes you back in love.
(Isaiah 54:9-10)
(Steve Greenberg)
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