Comments on Comments

While I am always grateful for comments, I don't usually mention them in posts -- for no reason really; it's just not a habit I've developed. I read them all, and think about them, though.

I thought today, though, since there were three comments on yesterday's post, I would mention them today.

bthomas said...
First of all recognize that one does not read poetry through a literal lens. Isaiah is using language to stress that the punishment of Israel's sin was complete and finished.

Also consider that punishment is the consequence of sin. It is not simply that sin produces negative consequences. It is that sin is judged and punished in the same way that faithfulness is rewarded.

I do, of course, realize that the poetry is not meant to be taken literally. I had just finished reading a week of Consequence scriptures for Disciple. The first few verses of this week's Comfort scriptures sent me over the edge with the double potion of punishment. I had been struggling with the idea of punishment last week, and here it was again. It wasn't the literally quantifying of the punishment; it was the whole of idea of it in the first place.

I don't have an image of a God who watches our behavior and then hands out rewards and punishments for it. My image of God is one who is holding out the graceful reward of salvation to all of us, crying out for us to accept it. We are hard-headed and stubborn, and we ignore him. The consequences and rewards are not really actions of God himself, but results of our own actions.

I do realize there is a difference between consequences and punishment. I think the consequences of our own sin are worse than any punishment God would offer. The bad things that happen to us are usually a result of what we have done to ourselves. God would not choose it for us.

John Meunier said...

Word studies may not help, but the etymology of the word "punishment" goes back to ideas of payment of fines or atonement for wrongs. Here is the etymoogy.

It may not have meant the same to us. Punishment was the price paid for wrongs done, not a form of suffering with only incidental connection to the error that leads to it.

I do like to look at etymology (and thanks for the link to the Online Etymology dictionary -- cool). Seeing punishment as price paid for wrongs done does help me to align it in my mind -- especially the word "atonement." I can then link it to the idea of Christ atoning for our sins.

bob said...

I believe the Jewish people would equate punishment with love (Spare the rod spoil the child). Therefore double the punishment equals double the love.

Thinking about my own kids, I don't that in the midst of punishment, they would see it as love. I do understand the link, though.

I think about raising children. I know, from reading about it, that there were very good outcomes to the exile. Monotheism, for example. Synagogue practices. God is good out that -- bringing forth blessings from pain. The best explanation I've heard for the idea of punishment in the Old Testament is that God removed his protection from the people for a time and allowed negative consequences to happen. It's not really biblical in the case of the exile, however.

I'm not sure this is a case of "spare the rod and spoil the child." I think in this period of time God is working to establish a seed -- a chosen people who would bless the rest of the world, recovering it from the sin of Eden. It had to succeed. In order for the plan to continue, the exile was necessary. It isn't what God would have chosen -- not his ultimate will. He would have chosen for his people to be faithful and obedient, but they were far from that. There were many times in the story of Judah that God delayed what was becoming inevitable. I wonder if he was hoping for his people to repent, to change direction, to make what had to happen unnecessary. I don't hear punishment in that, but a last ditch effort for redemption.

Well, maybe not last ditch. God made the ultimate sacrifice a few hundred years later.

Image: Trees on the way to Burlington, WV last month.