The Messianic Consciousness in Jewish Prophecy (LXXXV) Isaiah

“For, the waters of Noah is this to Me in that I have sworn. The waters of Noah do not pass again over the earth, so I have sworn. Wrath is not upon you, nor rebuke against you. For the mountains depart and the hills remove, but My loving kindness from you departs not. And the Covenant of My peace removes not, said has your loving One, the Lord.” (54:9-10)

God compares His promise not to bring back again the Flood over the earth to not removing His loving kindness from His people, nor His Covenant of peace, for He loves us. God's Love never departs from us. He doesn't judge us in wrath or rebuke after decreeing His Redemption.

“O afflicted, storm-tossed, not comforted! Lo, I am laying with cement your stones, and have founded you with sapphires. And have made of agate your towers, and your gates of carbuncle stones. And all your border of stones of delight, and all your sons are taught of the Lord, and abundant is the peace of your sons.” (54:11-13)

The goodness from which God created us is our essence and true identity, and also our common bond with Him. Goodness is afflicted and shaken in discomfort when negative traits and trends take over our consciousness. Once again God reaffirms that goodness will prevail forever by making it rule and direct all levels and expressions of consciousness. These are the precious stones as the higher traits and trends that are our delight. As evil is removed from our consciousness, only goodness leads our discernment, thoughts, emotions, feelings, passions and instincts towards the knowledge of God.

This necessary premise in the prelude to learn from the fully revealed Presence of God. Then the sons of Jerusalem will learn from the total awareness of their connection with God, and abundant peace will be their harvest. All the inner and hidden dimensions of the Torah will be fully revealed in our Final Redemption.

“In righteousness you established yourself, be far from oppression, for you feared not, and from ruin. For it came not near unto you. Lo, he does diligently assemble without My desire. Who has assembled near you? By you he fell!” (54:14-15)

Righteousness is the goodness God established for us as the foundation of all aspects and expressions of life. In goodness there is no oppression, fear or ruin that could come to us. If evil comes is not by God's desire, but by our own choice. In His Redemption, God gathers and assembles us around and near Him. Our full awareness of this dissipates all evils, and in this realization wickedness ceases to exist.

“Lo, I, I have prepared a blacksmith, blowing on a fire of coals and bringing out an instrument for his work. And I have prepared a destroyer to destroy. No weapon formed against you prospers, and every tongue rising against you in judgment you condemn. This is the inheritance of the servants of the Lord and their righteousness from Me, says the Lord!” (54:16-17)

God tells us about the strength and determination of the new consciousness He reserves for us in His Final Redemption. He refers to it as a blacksmith that feeds the transforming fire that will remove all evils from us. Thus we understand that God's Love is the fire that transforms our consciousness as we allow Him to rule and conduct all aspects and dimensions of life. This happens when we embrace Love's ways and attributes as the material manifestation of God's Love.

Love is the prepared destroyer to destroy all that is different from its ways and attributes. In this awareness there is nothing that could be against us. As we embrace God's Love as our Essence and true identity, we come to the realization that we are His children and His servants, and that the goodness of our righteousness comes from Him. Thus says the Creator of all.

The Messianic Consciousness in Jewish Prophecy (LXXXIV) Isaiah

“Sing, O barren, she has not borne! Break forth with singing, and cry aloud, she [that] has not brought forth! For more are the sons of the desolate than the sons of the married one, says the Lord.” (Isaiah 54:1)

The Creator refers to Jerusalem as the barren one, for it has been abandoned and desolated for a long time. He reminds us that she is the city as the principle and the foundation of our bond and connection to Him. She is the goodness we share with our Creator, with which we grow and multiply. She is barren as long as we don't let her bear children as the good deeds expected from goodness as our essence, cause and motivation.

The Jewish people are also the sons that abandoned her, and left her barren ever since. God's fulfills His Redemption by gathering back her children to her land. These are the sons that are more numerous than the sons of the “married one” that represent the nations. God's Redemption is the singing and crying aloud, for is the culmination of God's Love for His Creation.

“Enlarge the place of your tent, and the curtains of your tabernacles they stretch out. Restrain not, lengthen your cords, and your pegs make strong.” (54:2)

God's promise is fulfilled by commanding us to expand our consciousness into the goodness of Love's ways and attributes as the rulers of every aspect of life in the Messianic Era. This expansion includes our intellect, discernment, thoughts, feelings, emotions towards new dimensions revealed to us by God's Love.

“For right and left you break forth, and your seed do nations possess. And desolate cities they cause to be inhabited. Fear not, for you are not ashamed or blush, for you are not confounded. For the shame of your youth you forgot, and the reproach of your widowhood you do not remember any more.” (54:3-4)

As our awareness expands in all possible ways and means to acquire a higher knowledge of the Creator, every trait and trend in our consciousness will serve this end. These are the nations that our seed (our creations as well as our children) will possess. Our once abandoned and desolated creative potentials under the influence of negative traits and trends will be occupied and conducted by the goodness God will make prevail in the material world.

This will lead us to excel in our creativity to generate greater goodness among the diverse and multifaceted expressions of human consciousness. In order to fully achieve this destiny, evil and negativity will cease to exist. Therefore there won't be fear, shame or suffering, for there won't be affliction or confusion. God also reaffirms His promise by even making us forget the negative experiences we have lived throughout long centuries, that are our reproach and widowhood.

“For your Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is His Name. And your redeemer is the Holy One of Israel, 'God of all the earth' He is called. For as a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit called you has the Lord, even a youthful wife when she is refused, said your God.” (54:5-6)

God recalls His eternal Love for His chosen people that He gathers in the complete realization of our permanent connection with Him, making Israel His “wife”. He reminds us that our husband is the Creator of all, the Lord of multitudes, for His Creation is without measure: “He does great and unlimited things, and wonderful things without number.” (Job 9:10). He is the Holy One of Israel and God of all the earth to make us aware that our Redemption comes directly from Him. He also knows our grief and abandon as the result of our separation from His ways and attributes.

“In a small moment I have forsaken you, and in great mercies I do gather you. In overflowing wrath I hid My face for a moment from you, and in endless loving kindness I have loved you, said your redeemer the Lord!” (Isaiah 54:7-8)

God calls our separation from Him as His own. Let's always be aware that our estrangement is from us, not Him. Hence in His eternal loving kindness He gather us back to the permanent awareness of our connection with Him. Thus He fulfills His Redemption for us.

The Messianic Consciousness in Jewish Prophecy (LXXXIII) Isaiah

“It has been exacted, and he has answered. And he opens not his mouth as a lamb to the slaughter he is brought. And as a sheep before its shearers is dumb, and he opens not his mouth.” (53:7)

We have said that goodness is the expression of Love as the material manifestation of God's Love. Goodness is not haughty, and does not boast or pretend. Like truth, goodness does not need to defend itself. Thus we understand that the shearers of goodness find it dumb. Such is the way of ego's fantasies and illusions before Love's ways and attributes.

Ego's materialistic desires find no reason or meaning in goodness. Likewise, in spite of Israel's contributions to humankind, he has been silenced and slaughtered without even defending himself. Oppression in his land (by Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome), exile (Egypt, Babylon, the Diaspora), persecution and extermination (by Muslims “holy” wars, Christians Crusades and Inquisition, Pogroms, the Holocaust).

“By restraint and by judgment he has been taken, and of his generation who does meditate that he has been cut off from the land of the living? By the transgression of my people he is plagued. And it appoints with the wicked his grave, and with the rich are his high places. Because he has done no violence, nor is deceit in his mouth.” (53:8-9)

Humankind has not meditated quite enough about removing goodness from life. How can we find a transcending meaning in existence without living in goodness? Goodness is the cause, reason and purpose of life! How can it be cut off from life? At the same time the Prophet points out the consequences of restraining or removing goodness from human consciousness.

Goodness fails and dismays by negative traits and trends. These are the plagues we bring to Love as our Essence and true identity. Our transgressions lead us to share the same grave with the wicked. Goodness as our richness shares the high places with those who are also good. As long as we allow goodness to conduct all aspects and dimensions of life, there will never be violence or deceit.

“And the Lord has delighted to bruise him, He has made him sick. If his soul does make an offering for guilt, He sees seed, -- he prolongs days. And the pleasure of the Lord in his hand does prosper.” (53:10)

This painful metaphor must be understood in the proper context, which is that God does not delight Himself by inflicting pain on others. God takes for Himself the pain and suffering of His people. He takes Israel's oppression by the nations as His own, for in every defeat, humiliation and affliction, Israel's mission remains and transcends. For every sacrifice Israel does, there is a planted seed aimed to protect the goodness in life. God find pleasure in goodness, and makes it prosper despite the opposition of negative trends in consciousness.

“Of the labor of his soul He sees, he is satisfied. Through his knowledge he gives righteousness, the righteous one My servant to many. And their iniquities he does bear.” (53:11)

God sees the goodness Israel provides to humankind, by which he is pleased. Israel's knowledge and wisdom come from the Torah and his bond with the Creator. Anything opposite to that, Israel has to bear until the cause of evil will be finally removed from the face of the earth.

“Therefore I give a portion to him among the many, and with the mighty he apportions spoil, because that he exposed to death his soul. And with transgressors he was numbered, and he the sin of many has borne. And for transgressors he intercedes.” (53:12)

God is Israel's portion. This premise justifies Israel's mission in the world as stated in the Torah. Hence the “spoil” Israel gets is with the “mighty”, for God is the strength with which Israel prevails. This in addition to Israel's facing death in his endurance to maintain the Covenant with God. This endurance have also faced Israel's own transgressions as well as others' transgressions for which he is counted as bearer of their sins.

Therefore Israel is the middle man between sin and redemption from sin, the catalyst from the materialistic consciousness to the spiritual awareness that makes us realize our true identity and purpose in life. As we indicated earlier, Israel represents our highest level of consciousness from where we are able to transcend the lower traits and trends that separate us from the goodness of Love's ways and attributes as material manifestations of God's Love.

Again we must remark that the Final Redemption and the Messianic Era promised in the Torah (Deuteronomy 30:3-10) and reiterated by the Prophets will manifest through Israel, the people of the Covenant with God. It has been decided and decreed by God.

The Messianic Consciousness in Jewish Prophecy (LXXXII) Isaiah

We are going to reflect on Isaiah's chapter 53, which became the foundation for the worst face of anti-Semitism and judeophobia that ever existed in history. Other western religions have used their own interpretations of this chapter to condone, justify and promote the persecution and extermination of the Jewish people. Such interpretations are wrongly based on the complexities of Isaiah's phrasing of his words in this particular chapter. Fortunately, the Prophet already have given us previous clear contextual references that lead us to understand his words according to the traditional Jewish interpretation.

Isaiah presents his words interchanging Israel as a single person and as a people, juxtaposing his own words with God's words, and the interaction of Israel as a people with Israel as an individual. Israel as the ideal primordial Jew in contrast to Israel as the secular people far from emulating the ideal primordial Jew. With this clarifying preamble we begin to reflect on the verses of this chapter.

“Who has given credence to that which we heard? And the arm of the Lord on whom has it been revealed? Yea, he comes up as a tender plant before Him, and as a root out of a dry land. He has no form nor honor when we observe him, nor appearance when we desire him.” (Isaiah 53:1-2)

The Prophet speaks to the nations, questioning their credence to what the people of Israel have heard from the Creator. Have the nations really believed the teachings of the Torah that Israel understood from God? Do they believe in the God of Israel that have revealed His words, and in Israel as the arm to which He gave His revelation? Isaiah compares Israel to a sprout rooted in a dry land.

The metaphor tells us that the shoot represents life in the harshness of a dry land as the dead field from which it is destined to sprout and fructify. Goodness destined to prevail amid the barrenness of evil. The goodness of Love's ways and attributes over the futility of ego's fantasies and illusions. There is nothing that can shape the Jewish identity except the Torah.

Israel doesn't need to have a particular form of reference outside of the Torah, or a special honor in his appearance to be perceived by the nations. The external appearance of the Jewish people is the same as the rest of humans. Israel does not boast for having exterior form, sign or honor.

“He is despised, and left of men. A man of pains, and acquainted with sickness. And as one hiding the face from us, he is despised and we esteemed him not. Surely our sicknesses he has borne, and our pains he has carried them. And we, we have esteemed him plagued, smitten of God and afflicted.” (53:3-4)

Israel became the despised and outcast by the mission God gave them as His chosen people to build a place for Him to dwell in the world. This treatment by the nations have caused Israel pain and suffering throughout history. There has not been sincere appreciation or esteem for the people that have shared their Godly instruction with humankind. The Prophet joins the nations to call the ideal preeminence of Israel disesteemed and plagued, as if smitten and afflicted by God Himself.

“And he is pierced for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace is on him, and by his bruise there is healing to us.” (53:5)

Israel as the ideal primordial human consciousness to manifest God's will in the material world is indeed oppressed and harmed by our own transgressions, including Jews and non-Jews. Our highest level in consciousness is harmed by our iniquities and negative trends, for these oppose the goodness our highest awareness yearns for to fulfill God's will. We must reiterate that all we do against our goodness affects our peace. There is no peace while we let iniquities running our consciousness.

Let's be aware that peace also means wholesomeness, completion, and totality. A fractured consciousness is the result of our inability to harmonically integrating all its aspects, dimensions and expressions as a functional unity whose purpose is to make goodness prevail in the material world. Our punishment for transgressing against goodness is on our peace. In this context Israel represents the encompassing harmonic unity destined to serve God's plan for this world.

The oppression of Israel by the nations is also a lesson for them to learn about the effects of harming goodness. This intricate allegory must be understood not as implying that harming one person heals the offender, but a positive lesson to learn after we realize the harm caused to those who have not harmed others. This is not about atoning for someone by harming oneself. Harming Israel does not provide atonement for the nations, but the opposite, as it is written: “I'll bless those who bless you, and I'll curse the one who curses you, and through you all the people of the earth will be blessed.” (Genesis 12:3).

“All of us like sheep have wandered, each to his own way we have turned. And the Lord has caused to meet on him the punishment of us all.” (Isaiah 53:6)

Again the Prophet underlines Israel's responsibility as the Light to the nations: “And I give you [Israel] for a Covenant of a people, and a light to the nations.” (42:6), “And I have given you for a light to the nations, to be My redemption unto the end of the earth.” (49:6). Isaiah includes himself among the Jews and non-Jews who have strayed from God's ways, and follow the negative ways of ego's fantasies and illusions.

As we already mentioned, our iniquities are carried by our goodness. Our higher consciousness bears the weight of all our deeds. The iniquities and transgressions we allow in the world come back to confront our goodness. In a deeper level, we are responsible of every belief, idea, thought, feeling, emotion, passion and instinct in our consciousness. Hence ultimately our goodness is responsible for what we do.

The Messianic Consciousness in Jewish Prophecy (LXXXI) Isaiah

“How beautiful upon the mountains have been the feet of the One proclaiming tidings, sounding peace, proclaiming good tidings, sounding redemption; saying to Zion: 'Reigned has your God'!” (52:7)

God proclaims His good tidings, peace and Redemption in the heights of our consciousness. These are the mountains where His feet (His ways and attributes) rest upon. In these high levels He speaks to Zion as our eternal bond with Him, comforting us by saying that He always has been the King. Goodness is the name of His reign.

“The voice of your watchmen! they lift up the voice, together do they sing. For eye to eye they see in the Lord returning to Zion.” (52:8)

Our watchmen are the positive qualities, traits and trends that rejoice to recognize God's Love as our Creator. Goodness is the tower from where we are destined to see life and every aspect, dimension and expression of consciousness. In this reference and approach we also see God's Love revealing within ourselves.

Our Love and God's Love meet in Zion, and both loves see each other in their long awaited and yearned final encounter. This is the culmination of our Final Redemption, and the beginning of the Messianic Era. With our Love we return to God's Love, and we will see Him returning to us in Zion.

“Break forth into joy, sing together, O wasted places of Jerusalem. For the Lord has comforted His people, He has redeemed Jerusalem. The Lord has made bare His holy arm before the eyes of all the nations. And all the ends of the earth have seen the redemption of our God.” (52:9-10)

All aspects and dimensions of consciousness are destined to be a harmonic functional unity, expressing itself with the joy of singing along before God's revealed Presence among (in) us. In this awareness we realize that His Love is our comforter and Redemption from the fantasies and illusions we have created out of the material world. God's arm is His will that all His Creation will accept as the absolute truth that is, and all that exists will see His Redemption.

“Depart ye, depart ye, go ye out from there. Touch no unclean thing, go ye out of the midst of her. Be ye clean, ye that bear the vessels of the Lord. For not in haste do ye go out, for going before you is the Lord. And gathering you is the God of Israel!” (52:11-12)

Through the Prophet, God is urging us to leave the unclean things that contaminate our Essence and true identity as the foundations of our connection with Him. These are God's vessels in which He pours His blessings, for our Essence and identity are the source of His blessings.

Trusting God's Love is more important than our hurry to be redeemed from centuries of negative fantasies and illusions. First we must realize that God is our Creator, and we don't belong to ourselves but to Him. Thus we understand that He goes before us. God is gathering us from all the corners of the world to reveal His Redemption before the eyes of the nations. They will know that the only God is the God of Israel.

“Behold, My servant [Israel] does act wisely, he is high, and has been lifted up, and has been very high. As astonished at you have been many, so marred by man his appearance, and his form by sons of men.” (52:13-14)

Again God reminds us that Israel is His servant ever since He took us out of Egypt to be His chosen people. He made us wise with His Torah, and elevated us to be the Light for the nations. In His Final Redemption God gathers us back into our land, after being assimilated among the nations, and “marred by man his appearance, and his form by sons of men”.

We must begin our individual and collective in gathering from among the nations and return to our land, that also represents the goodness God wants us to live and make prevail in all aspects and dimensions of life.

“So does he sprinkle many nations. Concerning him kings shut their mouth. For that which was not recounted to them they have seen, and that which they had not heard they have understood!” (52:15)

In their dispersion around world, the children of Israel have enlightened many nations with the teachings of the Torah, striving to make goodness prevail. Since Abraham and Moses through kings David and Solomon, and up to our times, the contributions of the Jewish people to the nations have been essential and indispensable. All these in spite of constant persecution, harassment, humiliation, oppression and extermination. Jewish contributions to humankind are unquestioned and uncontested.