The Messianic Consciousness in Jewish Prophecy (LXXX) Isaiah

“Awake, awake, put on your strength, O Zion. Put the garments of your beauty, O Jerusalem, the holy city. For enter no more into you again the uncircumcised and the unclean.” (Isaiah 52:1)

There is a necessary awakening through the highest levels of discernment and understanding in our consciousness, which are the foundations of the awareness of our permanent connection with God (represented by Jerusalem and its Temple). This awakening requires obstinate determination and relentless willfulness as the required strength to return and regain such awareness.

In this awakening we adorn our consciousness with the qualities, traits and trends of the goodness out of Love's ways and attributes, for these are our real beauty and intrinsic holiness. In this awakening and awareness there is no place for anything different or opposite to them, which are referred here as the uncircumcised and the unclean. The verse above reiterates implicitly that the awakening of Jerusalem is the renaissance of Israel as the advent of the Messianic Era. The in gathering of the exiled Jews in the Land of Israel is the prelude to this Divinely announced final stage in human consciousness.

“Shake yourself from the dust. Arise, sit, O Jerusalem. The bands of your neck have loosed themselves, O captive daughter of Zion. For thus said the Lord: 'For nothing ye have been sold, and not by money are ye redeemed'.” (52:2-3)

God reminds us again that He has taken the burden of negative traits and trends from our consciousness. Therefore now depends on us to shake ourselves from the dust and dirt we do not need to bear anymore. We have to arise from the dust and sit in the throne of goodness as our true essential identity. We are not captives anymore, for our Creator is saying so.

God's Love is so good to us that He is telling us that our ransom does not cost us the same amount for which we sold our goodness. God speaks giving us His eternal loving kindness, even if we are undeserving. We have sold our consciousness for the nothingness and futility of ego's fantasies and illusions, and He redeems it without asking us to pay. God does not pay us with the same coin we sold our consciousness.

“For thus said the Lord God: 'To Egypt My people went down at first to sojourn there, and Asshur for nothing he has oppressed it. Now therefore what do I here, says the Lord, seeing that My people is taken away for nothing? They that rule over them do howl, said the Lord, and My Name continually all the day is despised.” (52:4-5)

God makes a difference between the subjugation in Egypt that He decreed, and the oppression by Assyria that was unnecessary. Indeed we were punished for our inclination to idolatry by being conquered and ruled by other nations, but the case of Assyria was exceptional. This nation not only oppressed Israel, but continuously desecrated God's Name.

Once again we must remark that the events in Isaiah's times also represent situations that are also reflections of what is happening in our consciousness. Even if negative things happen to us without apparent reasons, we still have to face them as the learning process God wants us to experience in the material world. Besides, we still live within the parameters of cause and effect.

Everything we have done or created not only has outcomes and consequences in our immediate surroundings, but also in the rest of God's Creation at large. The so called “butterfly effect” looks pale compared to the real effect of the mere fact of being living entities created by an infinite and inconceivable God.

“Therefore do My people know My Name, therefore in that day surely I am the One who speaks, behold Me.” (52:6)

As long as we recognize the ways and attributes of the Creator, what is meant to be understood as “knowing” His Name, we are able to realize that His will is the one that is being done, not ours. The Messianic Era is the time and space in which God's will and our free will are united together in consonance. That is “the day” when we all will realize that He is the One who speaks, and none else. Ego's agenda and all that is opposed to the goodness He wants us to guide and direct all aspects of life, will disappear and we will be able to see His will fully revealed in His Creation.

The Messianic Consciousness in Jewish Prophecy (LXXIX) Isaiah

“And I have put My words in your mouth, and have covered you with the shadow of My hand, to plant the heavens and lay the foundations of the earth, and to say to Zion: 'You are My people'.” (Isaiah 51:16)

God reiterates His Love for Israel, underlying again the Torah as the encompassing principle of the Jewish identity. God's words (the Torah) are meant to be in Israel's expression in all dimensions of life, and they are the protecting hand on which His Creation is sustained. Thus we understand the Torah as God's blueprint of both the material and spiritual worlds. Being called His people by God is another reiteration of the same principle.

God's words are the foundation and purpose of His Creation, and these are put in Israel's mouth as expressions of being Jewish. These are meant not only to be uttered in our speech but also in all our actions, in order to “plant the heavens and lay the foundations of the earth”.

Let's be mindful that here He refers to Israel as Zion, for this is the awareness of our permanent connection with God. This verse is another one of many in the Hebrew Bible that make us aware that the Jewish identity lies in Zion as our eternal bond with the Creator. This reminder for Israel is the preamble for God asking us to return to Him.

“Stir yourself, stir yourself, rise Jerusalem, who have drunk from the hand of the Lord the cup of His fury. The goblet, the cup of trembling you have drunk, you have wrung out. There is not a leader to her out of all the sons she has borne, and there is none laying hold on her hand out of all the sons she has nourished.” (51:17-18)

God asks us to shake our consciousness, remove the fantasies and illusions were we have trapped our selves, and return to the elevated place of our permanent connection with Him (Jerusalem). He calls up to our common bond with Him, which is our Love and His Love. The Creator is telling us that the cup of His fury is nothing more and nothing less than our separation and distance from His ways and attributes. We have drunk until the last drop of our separation from Him, that makes us tremble in the suffering of living away from Love as our essence and true identity. All we have created out of ego's fantasies and illusions have not served to bring us back to Love's ways and attributes.

“These two things are meeting you, who is moved for you? Desolation and destruction, and the famine and the sword. Who? I comfort you.” (51:19)

Desolation and destruction are the cause and also the effect of lack (famine) and violence (the sword). God asks us again what can save us out of the negative traits and trends we chose to believe, create and do. None would move to save us from them, for they make us become like them (we become the idols we have made from our hands). Hence God reminds us that He is the only One who comforts us with His Love by waiting for our return to goodness as the cause and purpose of His Creation.

“Your sons have fainted, they lie at the head of all the streets, as a wild ox in a net. They are full of the fury of the Lord, the rebuke of your God.” (51:20)

Our negative addictions, attachments, obsessions, beliefs, thoughts, speech and actions make faint the goodness in us that leads us to live in the freedom of Love's ways and attributes. We end up in the streets of materialistic fantasies and illusions, in which ego as a wild ox is trapped. Our negative trends set the separation and distance from God's ways, and become His anger and rebuke.

“Therefore hear now this, you afflicted and drunken, but not with wine. Thus says your God the Lord, and your God that pleaded the cause of His people: Behold, I have taken out of your hand the cup of trembling, the goblet, the cup of My fury you do not drink it any more.” (51:21-22)

God makes us aware that our drunkenness is not by the joy and cheer that come from wine, but from the predicament of frustration, haughtiness, greed, coveting, indifference, depression, anger, additions, obsessions, attachments, etc. God repeats twice here that He is not only our Creator but also the Father and King that is always on the side of goodness for the sake and purpose of goodness. He already announced His Final Redemption, which means that He never separated from us and that it is up to us to return to His ways and attributes as the foundation of His Redemption.   

“And I have put it into the hand of them that afflict you, who have said to your soul: 'Bow down, and we pass over', and you have made your body as the ground, and as the street to them passing over.” (51:23)

God tells us that affliction and suffering belong to those who cause them. Negative deeds belong to their predicament and consequences, and those who live by them are afflicted by them. They make us bow to them as their slaves, and thus we are trapped and passed over as downtrodden to the ground, and turned into the ground itself. With this principle of cause and effect God makes us aware that the choice is only ours.

The Messianic Consciousness in Jewish Prophecy (LXXVIII) Isaiah

“Hearken unto Me, ye who know righteousness, a people in whose heart is My Torah. Fear ye not the reproach of men, and for their insults be not broken.” (51:7)

After the previous introductory verse regarding righteousness, God summons us to return to His ways and attributes as the ones whose heart follows them. These are in the Torah that instructs us to assimilate them as our Jewish identity, with which there is nothing to fear before the darkness of negative trends in consciousness. These are the “reproach of man” that pursue our defeat by ego's fantasies and illusions that insult the intrinsic goodness of Love's ways and attributes.

“For like a garment the moth shall eat them up, and like wool the worm shall eat them. But My righteousness shall be forever, and My redemption for all generations. [Isaiah says] Awake, awake, put on strength, arm of the Lord. Awake, as in the days of old, the generations of ancient times. Isn't it You Who cuts Rahab in pieces, Who pierces a dragon!” (51:8-9)

Negative traits and trends in consciousness, derived from ego's fantasies and illusions, by definition are temporary and destined to disappear. They are not permanent and do not transcend, unlike Love's ways and attributes that are our cause, reason and purpose to live. The latter are the expressions of righteousness that transcends as the Redemption God gives us to live in forever. Hence we have to trust in what transcends in the life God wants us to have in the material world. This trust is the strength to which we must awaken, for it is the driving force that open every level and dimension of consciousness to God's Redemption. Righteousness is the strong arm with which Love directs and guides ego (“pierces the dragon”) along with negative traits and trends (“cuts Rahab in pieces”).

“Isn't it You Who dries up the sea, the waters of the great deep; Who made the depths of the sea a way for the redeemed to pass over? The ransomed of the Lord [the children of Israel] return, and come with singing to Zion; and everlasting joy is on their head, they attain gladness and joy. Fled away have sorrow and sighing.” (51:10-11)

God is the Creator of all, and He controls and directs all that exists, which includes His power to transform for the sake of freedom and redemption. The verse alludes to the Exodus from Egypt (“the sea a way for the redeemed to pass over”), as a reference that He also will redeem us from the dark side of our consciousness. From darkness we will return to God with a joyful heart that will rejoice forever.

“I, I am He your comforter, who are you and [why] you are afraid of man? he dies! And of the son of man, grass he is made! And you do forget the Lord your Maker, Who is stretching out the heavens, and founding earth! And you do fear continually all the day, because of the fury of the oppressor, as he has prepared to destroy. And where is the fury of the oppressor?” (51:12-13)

God questions the attachment and dependence on our addictions, obsessions and negative beliefs, emotions, feelings and actions as the works (creations) of man. These are our own inventions out of ego's fantasies and illusions. We fear being away from them, for we believe that they are stronger than our will to abandon them. In this sense we understand our fear of them, even if they are as ephemeral as grass, and as temporary as material life. As long as we depend on them, they are the oppressor prepared to destroy us.

God calls our attention to realize that anything coming out of our own fantasies and illusions have no anger, fury or power to destroy us, unless we let them. Ultimately we become the oppressors of our true identity, by allowing our negatives traits and trends to take over our discernment, thoughts, mind, emotions, feelings, passions and instincts.

“Speedily the captive is set to be free, and he does not die at the pit, and his bread is not lacking. And I am the Lord your God, quieting the sea when its waves roar. The Lord of Multitudes is His Name.” (51:14-15)

God reminds us again that His Redemption has always been near and in our reach. He also makes us aware that His promise will be fulfilled, in spite of our negligence to return to His ways and attributes as the cause and effect of our total freedom. God's Love is never lacking and goodness never dies, even in the depths of darkness. We come from God's Love, which is our peace, wholesomeness, completeness and plenitude, and quiets the upheavals of our struggles against the darkness of negative trends, “quieting the sea when it waves roar”. God's Love creates the immeasurable multitudes of His Creation that proclaim Him as our Maker and King, for the sake of His Name.

The Messianic Consciousness in Jewish Prophecy (LXXVII) Isaiah

“Hearken unto Me, ye pursuing righteousness, seeking the Lord. Look attentively unto the rock from which ye have been cut, and unto the hole of the pit from which ye have been dug. Look attentively unto Abraham your father, and unto Sarah that brings you forth. For when he was yet one alone, I have called him, and I bless him, and multiply him.” (Isaiah 51:1-2)

We have said often that goodness as the essential expression of Love is our common bond with the Creator. Indeed it is the foundation of what we understand as His image and likeness: “Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; His loving kindness is eternal.” (Psalms 106:1, 25:8, 34:8, 86:5, 100:5, 118:1, 118:29, 135:3, 145:9, 147:1; Ezra 3:11; 2 Chronicles 5:13, 7:3; Nahum 1:7; Lamentations 3:25).

King David and the Jewish Prophets want to remind us this fundamental principle the Torah repeatedly indicates: the Creator is good, and wants to make us aware that we are also essentially good, for we come from the goodness of His Love. Hence He is telling us through Isaiah that those who pursue His righteousness as His goodness first must be aware of the seed from which we were conceived.

The rock and the pit from which we come as allegories of the solid loving kindness of Abraham, and the abundant generosity of Sarah's womb. God depicts Abraham's loving kindness as unique (“alone”), and the reason for blessing him and multiply him. Thus we realize that God's abundant loving kindness and truth (Exodus 34:6) are the source of His blessings. These attributes are the foundation of the goodness God wants us to make prevail in us individually and collectively as a nation, in order to be spread out to all mankind.

“For the Lord has comforted Zion, He has comforted all her ruins. And He makes her wilderness as Eden, and her desert as a garden of the Lord. Joy, yea, gladness is found in her, thanksgiving, and the voice of song.” (Isaiah 51:3)

This verse follows immediately to make us realize that the foundation of our connection (the place called Zion) with the Creator is the goodness of Love's ways and attributes. God's Love restores and comforts our bond with Him. He turns the desolation of living in the negative traits and trends of ego's fantasies and illusions into the delights of goodness. The latter are the Eden, the gardens, the gladness and the joy living in God's ways and attributes.

“Attend to Me, My people; give ear to Me, My nation. For the Torah comes forth from Me, and My justice as a light for peoples to whom I will give rest. Near is My righteousness. My redemption has gone forth, and My arms judge peoples. The isles do wait on Me; yea, on My arm they do wait with hope.” (51:4-5)

The Torah encompasses God's ways and attributes that indeed define our Jewish identity, and make us His people and His nation. The Torah is the instruction we have to hearken and understand as the righteous path that becomes our being just. In this justice we find our freedom and enlightenment that make us live in encompassing peace as the rest God wants us to live in. Thus we realize that the Redemption God gives forth, and the judgment of His arms comes from the righteousness of His Love. Those who live in righteousness await His Redemption, for living in His ways and attributes is what keeps our hope in His deliverance from negative traits and trends in consciousness.

“Lift ye up to the heavens your eyes, and look attentively unto the earth beneath. For the heavens as smoke have vanished, and the earth as a garment worn out, and its inhabitants as gnats do die. But My redemption is forever, and My righteousness is not broken.” (50:6)

God invites us to reflect (lifting our eyes) on the spiritual (heavens) and the material (earth) aspects of His Creation, and realize that both do not transcend in their own existence. He tells us that what indeed transcends is the awareness of living in His Redemption as the beginning of the final and endless stage of His Creation, the eternal Shabbat that is the culmination of His ultimate plan.

This final stage is set by the righteousness of the goodness He wants to make prevail in His Creation. Thus we understand that righteousness and goodness are parts of the same encompassing principle that Love is, as the material manifestation of God's Love.