The Messianic Consciousness in Jewish Prophecy (XCIII) Isaiah

“Then broken up as the dawn is your light and your health in haste springs up. Gone before you has your righteousness, the glory of the Lord does gather you. Then you call and the Lord answers, you cry and He says, 'Here I am'. If you take away the yoke from your midst, the putting forth of the finger, and speaking of vanity.” (58:8-9)

These two verses encompass the awareness we must have permanently regarding goodness as our bond with God. Thus we realize that all the goodness in life depends on our own goodness. God's Love gathers us in our Love, and in this unity only goodness manifests, for God's Presence is in us. We begin this process as we remove the burdens we carry by choosing negative traits and trends we inflict on others. We do this by judging other people while we live the vanity of ego's illusions.

“And if you draw out your soul to the hungry and satisfy the afflicted soul, then your light has risen in the darkness and your thick darkness is as noon. And the Lord does lead you continually, and has satisfied in drought your soul. And your bones He arms and you have been as a watered garden, and as an outlet of waters whose waters lie not.” (58:10-11)

Once more we are reminded that loving our fellow man by sharing goodness is the Light that dissipates darkness in our consciousness. By living in the Light of goodness we also live in God's Light as our eternal guide, comfort and sustenance.

“And they have built out of you the wastes of old, the foundations of many generations you raise up. And one calls you, 'Repairer of the breach, Restorer of paths to dwell in'.” (58:12)

By being, having and doing Love's ways and attributes we remove their opposite traits and trends, the “wastes of old”. In the latter's open field they leave in our consciousness we build the ways and means God wants us to make prevail eternally.

By correcting and redirecting our ways, traits and trends in consciousness we become repairers and restorers of God's plan for the material world. We repair and restore the paths and ways in which we are destined to dwell in the Messianic Era.

“If you turn away your foot from the Shabbat, from doing your pleasure on My holy day; and call the Shabbat a delight, [and] the holy of the Lord honorable and shall honor it; not doing your own ways nor finding your own pleasure, nor speaking a word.” (58:13)

Again we are reminded that our Redemption is conditional to the choices we make. This time God brings up the Shabbat as the delight we yearn to enjoy with Him. We not just must honor Him as our Creator and sustenance, but by finding pleasurable and delightful His ways and attributes. Not finding pleasure in our own egotistical inventions during His day of rest. In the Shabbat we are before God and in His eternal domains, and not in the mirages of ego's fantasies and illusions.

Let's return to the heights of our consciousness where our Love reigns and dwells in the house of God's Love, for this is His will.

“Then you do delight yourself in the Lord, and I have caused you to ride on high places of earth. And have caused you to eat the inheritance of Jacob your father. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken!” (58:14)

The Messianic Consciousness in Jewish Prophecy (XCII) Isaiah

“Call with the throat, restrain not, as a trumpet lift up your voice, and declare to My people their transgression, and to the house of Jacob their sins.” (Isaiah 58:1)

God commands His Prophet to denounce the causes of Israel's separation from Him. He wants Isaiah to speak out at loud, clear and resounding enough for us to realize what truly matter in the material world which are His ways and attributes. God calls us again His people as an unequivocal signal of His Love for us.

“Seeing Me day by day they seek, and the knowledge of My ways they desire as a nation that has done righteousness. And the judgment of its God has not forsaken, they ask of Me judgments of righteousness. The drawing near of God they desire.” (58:2)

God knows that our innermost desire is to be with Him, and the way to achieve this is to be and do the goodness of Love's ways and attributes as our common bond with Him. He wants us to be good because He is good to us. This is what is just in doing what is right. Thus we realize that being and doing goodness are the ways to be close to God.

“'Why have we fasted and You have not seen? We have afflicted our soul and You have not known'. Lo, in the day of your fast ye find pleasure, and all your labors ye exact. Lo, for strife and debate ye fast and to smite with the fist of wickedness. Ye fast not as today to sound in the high place your voice.” (58:3-4)

The Prophet denounces our cynicism of doing evil and believing that fasting on Yom Kippur God must forgive us. He reminds us that the goodness of Love's ways and attributes does not cohabit with the negative traits and trends of ego's fantasies and illusions.

“Like this is the fast that I choose? The day of a man's afflicting his soul? To bow as a reed his head and sackcloth and ashes spread out? This do you call a fast and a desirable day to the Lord? Is not this the fast that I chose to loose the bands of wickedness, to shake off the burdens of the yoke, and to send out the oppressed free, and every yoke ye draw off?” (58:5-6)

God reaffirm His words of forgiveness and redemption as long as we truly desire to return to His ways and attributes. He indeed wants to remove the burden of the negative choices we make, though it depends on us to ask Him our Final Redemption.

“Is it not to share with the hungry your bread, and the mourning poor to bring home, that you see the naked and cover him, and from your own flesh hide not yourself?” (58:7)

God reminds us that loving each other as He commands us in the Torah is the key to our Redemption. We do it by not hiding in ego's fantasies and illusions, and letting Love lead all levels of consciousness and all dimensions of life.

The Messianic Consciousness in Jewish Prophecy (XCI) Isaiah

“And of whom have you been afraid and in fear, that you lie and have not remembered Me nor laid it to your heart? Have not I been silent, even from old times, and you have not feared Me? I declare your righteousness, and as for your works, they shall not be a profit for you.” (Isaiah 57:11-12)

God asks us to whom have we devoted our life, to whom we revere, respect, obey and serve, to whom we fear. What are those desires, ideas, beliefs, fashions, trends we pursue, which we consider more important to love and cherish than our Creator? God reminds us His silence as an answer to the negative choices we have made for a long time. He gave us free will to choose, yet we purposely ignore the ways and attributes that nurture and enhance our existence. This is one of the meanings of not “fearing” Him.

In this context “fear” is recognition, acceptance, appreciation, and that these imply which are reverence, respect and admiration. Thus we understand the “fearing” our Creator. God's ways and attributes are the righteousness He proclaims as our essence and true identity, opposite to our materialistic fantasies and illusions. The latter are the fields from which we never profit.

“When you cry let your gatherings deliver you. And the wind carries all of them away, taking away vanity. And who is trusting in Me inherits the land, and possesses My holy mountain. And He has said, 'Raise up, raise up, prepare a way, lift a stumbling-block out of the way of My people'.” (57:13-14)

God challenges us to rely on our own inventions, conceptions and beliefs as the idols we create with our hands, and hoping they deliver us from the darkness we get into. God reminds us that our vanities are ephemeral and short lasting as leaves cast away by the wind, in contrast to the goodness of Love's ways and attributes. The latter are the values and principles in which we trust God's providence, the land we inherit and the sacred foundation (His “holy mountain”) of our permanent connection to Him.

God again reaffirms His Redemption by asking us to wake up from our long sleep in the dreams of ego's fantasies and illusions, and arise to prepare the entrance to the Messianic era. For this we must remove the rock that contains all the stumbling blocks that prevent us from living our essence and true identity as God's people.

“For thus said the high and exalted One inhabiting eternity, and holy is His Name: 'In the high and holy place I dwell, and with the bruised and humble of spirit to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of bruised ones'. For I do not contend forever neither I am always angry, for the spirit from before Me is feeble and the souls I have made.” (57:15-16)

The Prophet reminds us specific attributes of God in this particular statement. High, exalted (elevated), eternal, holy in His Name, as transcendental traits we have to ascend by leaving bellow and behind the low, shallow, ephemeral and profane traits and trends in our consciousness.

Thus we understand the following statement related to humbleness and the revival of our loving essence and identity. We need to ascend to Love's ways and attributes to also reach up and bond with God's Love. God created us and He knows our flaws and weaknesses, hence His anger is not always and His Love is never hidden.

“For the iniquity of his dishonest gain I have been angry, and I smite him hiding [Myself] and am angry. He goes on turning back in the way of his heart. I have seen his ways and heal him. I lead him also and restore comforts to him and to his mourners.” (57:17-18)

Once again we emphasize that God's “anger” is a metaphor of our separation from His ways and attributes. In this context, He is indeed angry by our negative desires and choices. As we choose to live in ego's fantasies and illusions, we separate from Love's ways and attributes. By living away from the goodness of Love we also turn away from God's Love, yet in His compassion He awaits our return to His ways. In His ways we are healed. In the goodness He wants us to choose, He also comforts us from the pain and suffering (“the mourners”) we inflicted on ourselves.

“I create the fruit of the lips: Peace, peace, to him who is far off and to him who is near. And I have healed him, said the Lord. And the wicked are like the troubled sea, for it can't rest and its waters cast up mire and dirt.” (57:19-20)

What a beautiful poetic introduction to peace! God creates the “fruit of the lips”. Our Sages translate this phrase as the words of prayer, for God created us to praise Him. God wants us to ask for peace and pursue peace as the awareness of our oneness and completion with Him. Peace for all, the near and the far off, for God has already healed us with His Love.

We achieve this completion, as we mentioned above, by ascending to God through humbleness opposite to haughtiness that retains us down under negative traits and trends of ego's fantasies and illusions. These are the traits and trends of the wicked, and also their agitation and restlessness from which evil and destruction (mire and dirt) arise. Thus we understand the next verse.

“There is no peace, said my God, to the wicked.” (57:21)

The Messianic Consciousness in Jewish Prophecy (XC) Isaiah

“The righteous has perished, and no one takes it to heart. The righteous are gathered, and no one understands that the righteous are taken away to be spared from evil. He enters into peace, they rest on their beds, each is going straightforward.” (Isaiah 57:1-2)

God calls our attention again to makes us realize the dangers of indifference. We have seen disappearing goodness from the collective consciousness of humankind. We see more wickedness and hatred than goodness and love, and selfishness has become the paradigm in most civilized nations.

The Creator reminds us in these verses that the purpose of humankind is to emulate His ways and attributes, from which He made us and shaped our individual and collective consciousness. Hence He will not allow negative traits and trends to permanently rule life in the material world.

God points out His plan to make goodness prevail eternally by gathering the goodness in everyone in order to separate it permanently from evil. In goodness each one enters and dwells in peace, and rests in tranquility. This is the premise and the preamble to live in the straightforwardness of His ways and attributes that He will fully reveal in the Messianic Era.

“And come near here, you sons of a sorceress, seed of an adulterer and a prostitute, also you who prostitutes. Against whom do you sport yourselves? Against whom do you make a wide mouth, and stick out your tongue? Aren't you children of transgression, a seed of falsehood?” (57:3-4)

God also points out metaphorically the origins of the traits and trends triggered by ego's negative fantasies and illusions that corrupt the goodness in life. We turn them into the objects of our desires that make us believe they are the only purpose in life. We sport ourselves in them and for them, boasting in pride how much we possess them, even if we certainly know that they are transgressions out of the seed of falsehood.

“You who inflame yourselves among the oaks, under every green tree; who kill the children in the brooks, under the clefts of the rocks? Among the smooth stones of a brook is your portion. They, they are your lot. Also to them you have poured out a libation, you have brought an elevating offering. For these things am I comforted?” (57:5-6)

God makes reference to trees as objects and symbols of idolatry in the time of His Prophets. Idolatrous offerings to gain sensual pleasures and social power at the expense of their children's lives.

We can also understand children as constructive expressions of our consciousness we make subservient to a materialistic lifestyle, represented by the brooks and clefts of the rocks.

These rocks, even smoothly polished, become our portion in life. We make them the altars we erect to pour libations and bring offerings, putting our consciousness under the idolatry and servitude of ego's fantasies and illusions. Hence God ask us if we believe that He is pleased by our negative choices.

“On a high and exalted mountain you have set your bed, there also you have gone up to bring offerings. Behind the doors and the posts you have set up your memorial, for you have uncovered to someone besides Me, and have gone up. You have enlarged your bed, and made yourself a covenant with them. You have loved their bed where you have harvested.” (57:7-8)

The metaphor continues telling us that we establish our false and negative beliefs, principles and values (as a high and exalted mountain) as the bed where we remain asleep in our own materialistic fantasies and illusions to which we devote the goodness of our vitality. Inside the house that represents our consciousness we set up our desires dedicated to something different than God's ways and attributes.

We elevate the objects of our selfishness, enlarge our addiction to them, and even have a lasting covenant with them. We end up loving what we harvest from them, the outcome of fantasies and illusions.

“You go to the king in anointment, and multiply your perfumes, and sent your ambassadors far off, and debased yourself down to the netherworld. In the greatness of your way you have labored, you have not said, 'It is vain'. The life of your hand you have found, and you have not been fainted.” (57:9-10)

More references of haughtiness from which we boast vanities (“perfumes”), rejecting the traits and qualities that define our essence and true identity (“our ambassadors”), and going down to the graves of futile fantasies and illusions.

We devote our life working for the mirages of consumer society and false beliefs and values, denying ourselves their vain purpose. No matter our endeavor and dedication to serve those idols, we don't faint in our determination to live for them and die for them.