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.