The Gospel of Isaiah: Ch. 54:10, Mercy and Peace

The Gospel of Isaiah: Ch. 54:10, Mercy and Peace.

WANTED: An imaginative scribe who can write exquisite poetry. A faithful, articulate believer in Yahweh who can switch from one extreme to another at the Lord’s command… from a sublime vision of God’s glory, to a ridiculous demonstration of shameful nakedness; from confronting the people over their sinfulness, to comforting people with hopefulness; from being an outspoken messenger one minute, to a living object lesson the next; from having one foot in the immediate surroundings one minute, to one foot in the future messianic realm the next. Must be adaptable, thick-skinned, and extraordinarily brave. Person who answers, “Here I am. Send me!” will be especially considered. (from The Jerusalem Post, 740 BC).

“The mountains may be shaken, and the hills may be removed, but My mercy (“hesed”) will never depart from you, and My covenant promise of peace (“shalom”) will never be broken, says the LORD Yahweh, who has mercy (“rachem”) on you.” (54:10).

Hesed = the Hebrew word for mercy, and is often translated as lovingkindness, indicating a steadfast love, covenant faithfulness, unfailing loyalty, love-in-action. Hesed has so many dimensions that it is much easier to describe than define. Hesed may be the most important word in the Hebrew Bible, because it is considered a summary word for all of God’s character traits, the driving force behind all He does. There is no one translation of hesed that is perfect or says it all. Hesed is used 26 times in the classic Psalm 136 in order to focus on God’s continued and unwavering mercy and patience due to His eternally faithful lovingkindness. Hesed is a covenant word, a relationship word, and celebrates God’s commitment to remaining true to his merciful promises out of sheer love. “Hesed” is used over 120 times in the book of Psalms alone, and a grand total of 250 times in the Hebrew Bible.

Descriptions of Mercy: Eager love-in-action; steadfast kindness; loyal compassion; faithful favor; generous grace; the ardent desire to do good to someone; a completely undeserved lovingkindness; an affectionate love that goes beyond what is expected, above and beyond, free of charge, no strings attached; the generous love reserved for someone in an intimate relationship, and if there is no prior relationship, the strong desire to treat someone as if that relationship existed.

“Who is wise and will guard these things and will understand the mercy of the Lord?” (Ps.107:43) Who is wise? What is one key aspect of gaining wisdom? The wise person is one who understands The Mercy, God’s mercy.

Mercy is the Centerpiece of God’s Self-Identity. When at the base of Mt. Sinai, Moses asked God if he could see God’s glory. (Exodus 33:19). The Lord Yahweh responded by saying that He would pass before Moses, but he would not be allowed to see His “face,” only His backside. The Glory is too overwhelming for humans who are not equipped to experience a consuming fire quite yet. Yahweh told Moses that He will cause all His “goodness” to pass before Moses, and that in Moses’ presence He will pronounce His holy Name. Goodness is usually a synonym for mercy, because God’s goodness is revealed through His mercy. So Moses ascended Mt. Sinai to meet God at the top, and Yahweh descended in a cloud and stood there with Moses. Only God can accurately name Himself, and here we see the Lord pronouncing His sacred Name… “God passed before Moses and proclaimed, “I AM Yahweh! I AM Yahweh! A God who is compassionate and gracious, longsuffering and slow to anger, abounding in mercy (hesed) and truth, preserving mercy (hesed) for thousands of generations, forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin, but by no means clearing the guilty or allowing sin to go unpunished.” (Exodus 34:6-7). What a singular moment! The Almighty God, the Great I AM, describes His Name, His identity. He is revealing to Moses how He sees Himself in His Essence. What a turning point in history! The Lord of the universe chooses to reveal Himself in utter transparency to a human being! ‘You want to know what I am made of, Moses, the Lord is saying, then this is how I describe my character, these are my core attributes. Yes, I am the great LORD, and this is Me in a nutshell… rich in mercy, compassion, grace, forgiveness. That is truly who I am, Moses!’ At the very end of this historical self-description, God reminds Moses (and all of us) that He is Lord of a moral universe, that there is such a thing as right and wrong, and He has established an ultimate system of justice. God’s statement about justice and moral accountability, interestingly enough, seems to have been made in the context of mercy and forgiveness, of compassion and grace. So it appears that if God’s will springs out of God’s core character, His will must be mercy.

Covenant. Hebrew, “bereth“= an enduring, two-way promise of faithfulness and loyalty based on trust; a solemn alliance establishing a binding relationship of blessing and accountability; an official promise of mutual commitment. The mystery is that, based on His heart of grace and favor, when people do not live up to their side of the covenant with God and are persistently rebellious, God chooses to live up to His side of the covenant regardless. Even considering the series of blessings and curses involved in God’s covenant with us, even with the human side of the promise being broken, God’s remains faithful, forever loyal because of his mercy.

The New Covenant Predicted. “The day is coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and Judah. This covenant will not be like the one I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand and brought them out of the land of Egypt. They broke that covenant, though I loved them as a husband loves his wife, says the Lord. But this is the new covenant I will make with the people of Israel after those days, says the Lord. I will put my instructions deep within them, and I will write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. And they will not need to teach their neighbors, nor will they need to teach their relatives, saying, ‘You should know the Lord.’ For everyone, from the least to the greatest, will know me already, says the Lord. And I will forgive their wickedness, and I will never again remember their sins.”  (Jeremiah 31:31-34).

The New Covenant Fulfilled. “Jesus took some unleavened bread called matzah, and gave thanks to God. Then He broke it in pieces and gave it to the disciples, saying, ‘This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ After supper He took another cup of wine and said, ‘This cup is the New Covenant between God and His people – an agreement confirmed with my blood, which is poured out as a sacrifice for you.’” (Luke 22:19-20).

SHALOM = The ancient Hebrew word translated as peace: completeness or wholeness, as in the joining together of opposites; integrity, as in the effective holding together of separate pieces; to give/restore harmony; fulfillment; health; security; abundant well-being; the state of having the vitality needed to thrive and flourish; tranquility; freedom from disquiet and disorder; reconciliation; resolution of conflict/war; healing of division; prosperity. The Greek word for peace in the New Testament is “Eirene,” and means the same thing as “Shalom” in the Hebrew Bible. Shalom ranks the highest of all values in the Hebrew Bible, according to Jewish scholars. Shalom is the most important goal in all of life. “Rabbinic teaching describes it as the only vessel through which God’s blessings can flow into this world.” (Rabbi Arthur Green, These are the words: A Vocabulary of Jewish Spiritual Life).

Mercy. Hebrew, “rachem” = Womb is one of the root words for mercy in the Hebrew Bible. The word “rachem” is translated in Scripture as mercy, compassion, and womb. In the Hebrew mind, the womb is much more than the sacred place in a woman that enables the unborn baby to safely develop till birth. Womb also became a metaphor for mercy because of its linguistic roots. The Hebrew word rachem is intended to mean mercy-womb. God formed each of us with rachem when we were mere unborns, and we were conceived and nourished within His rachem, the mother’s mercy-womb. The baby within the woman is the ideal time to extend God’s compassion to that human being inside of her. The developing baby utterly depends on a mercy-womb. And God wants Himself to be experienced as our womb-sanctuary, our safe place in Him, our refuge and shelter. God Himself yearns to be experienced as a womb of mercy for each of us, a refuge and shelter and safe haven. The purpose of our lives is to live in God’s rachem, God’s womb of love.  Passages with “rachem” include Isaiah 14:1, 30:18, 49:15 and 60:10; Jeremiah 12:15 and 3:20; and Lamentations 3:32; Ps. 106:46.

THOUGHTS AND VERSES ON MERCY:

1. “Without the word ‘mercy,’ the Bible is a dead book in which there is no revelation of God at all.”

“Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives the transgression of his inheritance? You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy. You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea.”  (Micah 7:18-19)

2. “The root of all of God’s activity in this world, beginning even with the world’s creation, is Mercy.”

“The Lamb that was slain from the foundation of the world… For a child has been born to us, and authority has settled on his shoulders. He has been named ‘The Mighty God is Planning Grace; The Eternal Father, a Peaceable Ruler.’ O LORD, You are my God; I will extol you, I will praise Your Name. For You planned graciousness of old, counsels of steadfast faithfulness.” (Rev. 13:8; Isaiah 9:5 and 25:1; Tanakh version)

3. “Mercy is the cause and reason of all that God does. God does nothing, absolutely nothing, except as an expression of His Mercy.”

“I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my Name… ‘The LORD! The LORD! A God compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in kindness and faithfulness, extending kindness to the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin.” (Exodus 33:19, 34:6-7)

4. “His Mercy stretches out to both extremes of infinity. All we will ever discover of God will be the deepening levels of His great, abundant, overflowing, rich, endless Mercy.”

“I will praise you, O LORD, among the nations; I will sing of you among the peoples. For great is your love, higher than the heavens; your faithfulness reaches to the skies. Be exalted, O God, above the heavens, and let your glory be over all the earth.” (Psalm 108:3-5)

5. “When we deal with God, everything is Mercy. Everything else that can be said of God is but an aspect of His Mercy.”

“Though he was in the form of God, he did not deem equality with God something to be grasped at. Rather, he emptied himself and took the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of men. He was known to be of human estate, and it was thus that he humbled himself, obediently accepting even death, death on a cross! (Philippians 2:6-8)

6. “For His Mercy endures forever’ lies under each line of Holy Scripture, and is the eternal song of the saints.”

“Enter His gates with thanksgiving; go into His courts with praise; give thanks to Him and call upon His Name. For the Lord is good; His mercy is everlasting; His faithfulness endures from age to age.” (Psalm 100:3-4)

7. “It is better to limit belief in God’s power than to dampen faith in God’s mercy. Between mercy and power, mercy takes precedence – and to the mercy of Heaven there is no limit.”

“The Lord’s mercies never cease, His compassions never fail. They are renewed every morning. Great is your faithfulness! The Lord is my portion, He is all I have, therefore I have hope in Him.” (Lamentations 3:21-24)

8. “Mercy is the defining explanation of everything that God has revealed of Himself. Mercy is the explanation of every single thought that God has with respect to us.”

“‘I beseech you, Lord,’ he prayed, ‘is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? This is why I fled at first to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger, rich in kindness, loathe to punish.” (Jonah 4:2)

9. “Mercy rather than justice is regarded as the outstanding attribute of God.”

“Rend your hearts rather than your garments, and turn back to the Lord your God. For He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in kindness, and renouncing punishment.” (Joel 2:13)

10. “Beyond all mystery is the mercy of God. It is a love, a mercy that transcends the world, its value and merit. To live by such a love, to reflect it, however numbly, is the test of religious existence.”

“We are only on the outer fringes of Your works! How faint the whisper we hear of You! I am unworthy – How can I reply to You? I put my hand over my mouth. Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know.” (Job 26:14, 40:4, 42:36)

11. “The encounter with God’s Mercy, a celebration of God’s sustained and abundant Mercy, is the root of all Christian worship.”

“The trumpeters and singers joined in unison, as with one voice, to give praise and thanks to the Lord. Accompanied by trumpets, cymbals and other instruments, they raised their voices in praise to the LORD and sang: ‘He is good; His mercy endures forever.’ Then the temple of the Lord was filled with a cloud, and the priests could not perform their service because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the temple of God.” (2 Chron. 5:13-14; see also 2 Chron.7:3, and Ezra 3:11)

 Bold Italics: #1 is Brother Rex Andrews from his book What the Bible Teaches About Mercy; #7 (Heavenly Torah), and #9 (A Passion for Truth), and #10 (God in Search of Man) are from Abraham Joshua Heschel; all the remaining quotes are from Rev. Patrick Henry Reardon’s book Christ in the Psalms. Italics: Verses from Holy Scripture, various translations. Compiled by Steve Larson.

Mercy in the Past, Present and Future. So, earnestly do we want to look into the past and recognize how God has shown mercy, as David did in Ps. 13:5, “I have trusted in your mercy.” We want to consider the present, in the dark and confusion, and ask good questions, and still confidently trust in The Mercy, like David did in Ps. 52:8, “I trust in the mercy of God for ever and ever.” And we want to look at the future, into the unknown, and hope in His mercy as Jeremiah did in Lamentations 3:21-24, “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, says my soul, therefore will I hope in him.”

Final Thought: “Never let go of mercy and truth. Don’t lose sight of them, don’t forget them at all costs. Engrave mercy and truth on a pendant and hang them on your neck wherever you go; meditate on them deeply so that they are written upon your heart.” (Proverbs 3:3).