The Gods Arraigned

On the day a city falls, something happens that the prophet describes with a grim sort of relish. The enemy is at the gate, the temples are being emptied, and the great gods of Babylon, Bel and Nebo, are lifted from their pedestals and loaded onto pack animals. There they go, on the backs of oxen and mules, listing sideways, lashed down with rope, a cargo that makes the beasts sweat. The mightiest gods of the mightiest empire on earth cannot lift a finger to save themselves. They cannot carry the load, they are themselves the load, and they go into exile as plunder on a farm cart. Bel's back is bent, Nebo sags forward; the gods before whom a whole nation had bowed go jolting away on an oxcart. With that image Isaiah opens the indictment, and the point lands without mercy: a god you must carry is baggage.

God summons the idols to court. Come, He says, bring your case, present your evidence. Tell us what happened before, or foretell what is coming; do something, anything, good or bad, so that we might be alarmed and see that you exist. It stays silent. The defendants stand speechless in the dock. Look, says God, you are nothing, and your work is less than nothing; whoever chooses you chooses emptiness. Against that empty silence He sets His own question: to whom, then, will you compare Me, that I should be his equal? Lift your eyes to the heights. Who created all this? He who brings out the starry host by number, who calls them all by name, so mighty and so exact that not one is missing. On the other side of the courtroom stands an image the smith has worked with hammer blows and then fastens with nails so it will not totter. They nail their god down. There is not much resemblance to be found with the God of the stars.

The prophet reaches for the sharpest mockery in the whole Bible, and you can hear the bitter laugh in it. The smith grows hungry while he forges his god and turns faint, for he has drunk no water. The carpenter measures out his god with a line and marks him with a stylus, neatly to human size. And somewhere a man stands in the forest. He cuts down a tree, a sturdy cedar. Half the wood he throws on the fire. He warms himself by it, says "ah, good and warm," bakes his bread over it, roasts his meat over it, eats his fill. From the other half, the same piece of wood from the same tree, he carves an image. He kneels before it, bows down and prays: "Save me, for you are my god." The same plank he roasted his meat on this afternoon, he asks tonight to save his soul. He does not even notice, says Isaiah; his heart is deceived, he feeds on ashes, and it never occurs to him to ask whether there is not a lie in his right hand. Isaiah draws the madness so sharply that you would laugh if it were not so sad: half of your god is kindling.

A god of wood says nothing. Call on him, and he does not answer; he stands where he has been put. In the middle of that lawsuit against mute images the living God lets His voice be heard, and the first thing that sounds is a battle cry. YHWH goes out like a hero, like a warrior He stirs up His zeal, He raises the war cry, He shouts aloud, He shows Himself a hero against His enemies. Then the voice breaks. "For a long time I have kept silent, I have been still and restrained Myself. Now I groan like a woman in labor, I gasp and pant at once." For generations He had looked on, while His people ran after baggage on an oxcart and Babylon laughed at His Name. All that time He held Himself in, the way a woman bites back the pain until she can no longer. Now He can no longer. The Creator who calls the stars by name lies in labor over a people that had forgotten Him. The zeal of a warrior and the labor pains of a mother, from one mouth. Why such fire? He says it Himself: "Because you are precious in My eyes, honored, and I love you." And what He brings into the world with such pain, He does not abandon: "I will lead the blind by a way they do not know, I will turn the darkness before them into light. These are the things I do, and I will not forsake them."

Whoever gives birth goes on to carry. So comes the tenderest line in the whole indictment. Listen to Me, house of Jacob, says God, you who have been carried by Me from the womb, lifted up since birth. To your old age I am the same, and to your gray hairs I will carry you. I have made, and I will lift; I will carry and I will save. The whole difference between the gods fits into that reversal. The idols must be carried, on oxcarts and on weary shoulders, and your whole life long you haul your god along. This God carries you, from the day you were too small to walk to the day you have grown too old to walk any longer. The whole history of a human life, from first breath to last, is one long story of being carried by hands that never tire. That is why He can say what no idol could ever stammer: I am YHWH, and there is no other; besides Me there is no God. Turn to Me and be saved, all ends of the earth, for I am God, and there is no other.

Look one more time at that oxcart, jolting out through the gate. Bel lies on his side, Nebo is roped to the cart bed, and the beasts are panting under their load. So it is with every god a human being ever devised: he has to be hauled somewhere, for he cannot walk, nor speak, nor save. A man carries him in the hope that one day the burden will carry him back, and that never happens. Only a God who rests on nothing, needing no pedestal and no oxcart because no human being made Him, is able to carry. Out of the same gate of Babylon two processions will go. One hauls its gods into exile. The other goes home, with the gray-haired and the infants, and is carried.

A note on the source text. The gods on the pack animals, Bel and Nebo: Isaiah 46:1–2; "I have made, and I will carry [...] even to gray hairs": 46:3–4; the idol that does not answer: 46:7. The lawsuit against the idols: 41:21–24; 43:9–13. "To whom will you compare Me?" and the stars called by name: 40:18–26. The image fastened with nails: 41:7; cf. 40:20. The smith, the carpenter, and the woodcarver who warms himself at half and worships the other half: 44:9–20. The zeal of the hero and the labor of the woman giving birth: 42:13–14; the blind led, "I will not forsake them": 42:16; "because you are precious [...] and I love you": 43:4; "Go out from Babylon": 48:20. "I am YHWH, and there is no other": 45:5–6, 18, 21; "and there is no other" as a refrain: 45:5–6, 14, 18, 21–22; 46:9. The divine Name as YHWH.