On Eagle's Wings

• By Storyteller's Companion to the Bible
• Posted on January 20th, 2012

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The Story

Don’t you know? Haven’t you heard?
Wasn’t it announced to you
from the beginning?
Haven’t you understood
since the earth was founded?
22 God inhabits the earth’s horizon—
its inhabitants are like locusts—
stretches out the skies like a curtain
and spreads it out
like a tent for dwelling.
23 God makes dignitaries useless
and the earth’s judges into nothing.
24 Scarcely are they planted,
scarcely sown,
scarcely is their shoot
rooted in the earth
when God breathes on them,
and they dry up;
the windstorm
carries them off like straw.

25 So to whom will you compare me,
and who is my equal?
says the holy one.

Power for the weary

26 Look up at the sky and consider:
Who created these?
The one who brings out
their attendants one by one,
summoning each of them by name.
Because of God’s great strength
and mighty power, not one is missing.
27 Why do you say, Jacob,
and declare, Israel,
"My way is hidden from the LORD
my God ignores my predicament"?
28 Don’t you know? Haven’t you heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God,
the creator of the ends of the earth.
He doesn’t grow tired or weary.
His understanding
is beyond human reach,
29 giving power to the tired
and reviving the exhausted.
30 Youths will become tired and weary,
young men will certainly stumble;

31 but those who hope in the LORD
will renew their strength;
they will fly up on wings like eagles;
they will run and not be tired;
they will walk and not be weary.

Isaiah 40:21-31 (CEB)

Comments on the Story

In this last half of the first chapter of "Isaiah of Babylon," we get to see the enthusiasm and exuberance of this prophet. This individual is truly moved by the marvelous news of salvation and return to Jerusalem and is eager to share it. We also get to see certain literary devices the prophet uses to convince the exiles that his message of God's coming liberation is credible.

Our reading begins right after the prophet's emphasis on the incomparability of the God who is giving this good news. Nothing at all is like this God. Especially no model or form of god is like the God whom the prophet preaches and whom the exiles are to believe. Now the prophet turns to the idea that the God who wants to deliver them is the God who made the world. The passage begins with a kind of chiding: The people have certainly heard of creation and should now become convinced that the God who created their world can now surely do whatever is needed to bring about their salvation from captivity.

Perhaps some storytellers have been struck by the reference to locusts right in the middle of this elevated speech on creation. Do locusts really carry much theological weight in a prophet's argument? Actually the use of the Hebrew word for this insect is very effective. The prophet has chosen a double word play to get the message through. The word translated "inhabits" (from yashab) is related to "inhabitant" (also from yashab), and the word rendered "horizon" (chug; RSV has "circle") sounds similar to "locusts" (chugab). The prophets were predecessors of speechwriters who might employ some trick to get the message out and across. (Some older readers might recall the "nattering nabobs of negativity.")

Another image also might surprise the reader: God "stretches out the skies like a curtain
and spreads it out like a tent for dwelling." (v. 22). The imagery has shifted from "horizon" to "tent." The prophet reveals an awareness that the dome of the sky, as the ancients conceived of the sky, was like a tent. It was the tent of meeting where in ancient times God made revelations, where God met with people, and where God planned the next action. This time the next action will be the deliverance of the exiles.

The prophet in verses 23-24 declares that God can overturn anything, reverse any process or event, and certainly reduce any person. In a nice touch, the prophet compares the Babylonian leaders and their actions to the grass of the field, the same image used in the opening scene for the broken and exhausted exiles themselves. God can change all things, can do all that is necessary to free the people.

A final insistence that God can be compared to nothing introduces the idea that even the stars of heaven will have a roll call, preparatory to the moment when God will act. What greater conviction could an ancient person have than to know that the most regular things in life, the stars of the sky, must follow the commands of one's own God?

The passage reaches its goal when Israel is addressed directly. "Jacob" is, of course, simply a different way of referring to the people as "Israel," following the biblical tradition that the ancestor Jacob was renamed Israel. The prophet chides Israel for being timid and untrusting. Israel, in a moment of despondency, had said that God does not care about him.

It is not difficult to see why Israel is depicted as saying this. The exile was an enormous disorientation for the people. So many elements of what they had held as essential to their tradition and religion were now gone or inaccessible. No temple, no sacrifice—the very things by which one could reach God no longer existed. Gone too was a reigning king, the person in whose majesty one could see a reflection of the divine. Away from the city of their birth and growing up years, the exiles had little foundation for hope and conviction that their God could still act with power.

The prophet is persistent in his message: God can change all that. Even if the young grow weary and faint, God can and will give them strength and vigor. Trust in the fact that God will change weakness into strength. In a final, irresistible image, the prophet says that the exiles' revivification will feel like being carried on eagles' wings. Running toward the goal of return will not even be felt as a strain. One can almost hear the divine wings as the exiles are being borne aloft to return home.

Retelling the Story

It's not that it was a famous race, you understand. It was a small-time race in a small town that had a lot of time. And it's not that any world records were broken—nothing like that. It's hard enough to do anything but stroll when the July heat descends on the river and the whole Ohio Valley takes a steam bath. And it's not that there haven't been some really fine runners, long-legged golden boys and girls who made it out of town and went on into the world without breaking stride.

It's just that memories tend to get stuck in the unexpected cracks in reality's sidewalk. Something odd trips you up, and you remember that place, those people, whatever was said or not said, done or not done. Memories congregate around those cracks, and then come the stories. These make more memories, and before you know it, the crack turns into a chasm.

The race was a memorial all by itself; each entry fee went to a scholarship dedicated to a young Greek god destined for the majors, until some drunk shattered this collective hope into broken bones and glass. It helped to work out our grief in a public way, to outrun the pain held in common. And over the years, the scholarship did help some other winners get out of town in style.

But this particular monument of memories is dedicated to a loser of this race. The unexpected part wasn't the fact that he lost. We expected him to lose. He was only six years old, after all. The armband that his mother put on him flopped around his elbow. He bounced around the starting line with a nervous energy that the neighbors said reminded them of his dad, who had died shortly before his son was born. Seeing him there, outnumbered and outweighed, wasn't the unexpected part. Aaron was a doer, like his dad. This race was worth doing, so Aaron was there.

The mayor talked a little too long and pulled the starting trigger a little too soon, but that was expected. Everybody and anybody was there to run or watch. That, too, was expected. The real drama came from wondering whether the octogenarian optometrist might die this year with his sneakers on, or whether Mr. X would notice how good the former Mrs. X looked in running shorts. And didn't he deserve every wink, running around on her like he did? All sorts of humanity lined up along Main Street, ready to run the good race.

Once the gun went off, all the watchers retreated to porches and lemonade. Well out of the sun, we discussed the route as if it were a marathon. Three times around the town limits. We speculated less about winning, more about just hanging on. The first runner made his appearance down at the corner of the volunteer fire department, home of the only real Christians in town. We scanned the runners as they came by, some with smiles tied neatly as shoes, some already unraveling. Aaron wasn't last. He waved once, but did not smile, fierce and frail all together.

The second round held to the expected; front runners came and went, and we waited for the runners-up. Now heat and stress began to strip away the padded layers of control. The joints of personality were laid bare. Some runners went missing, having surrendered, breathless, on some neighbor's porch. The optometrist was reduced to a stroll, enjoying the view, and Aaron was last, his armband missing, face and fists clenched, nothing to spare.

On the third lap, three golden boys jockeyed for first place. One won by a nose, but all were cheered and properly pounded. Now the serious watching began. Who was left, and what had it cost them to come this far? Mr. X got a few nods, but the ex-Mrs. X was loudly cheered as she finished four steps behind.

When the last runner had rounded the corner, the crowd prepared to celebrate, spilling into the street, closing the gap. A loud whistle parted us open. A small figure was spotted rounding the corner, on his last lap. We gave him room, held back by his too-white face, his too-fixed eyes. Ten yards away, the unexpected happened. One minute he was up, the next he was down, tripped by a lace or a stone or by being just six. He went down, and we watched his mother, to see what she would do. She had first rights to first aid.

She pushed through and bent down to check him, to see that he was all right, whether he wanted to rise on his own. After a count of two heartbeats, she picked him up and turned. She shifted him higher, took a deep breath, and then—well, she carried him over the finish line. Ran him right over the line. You had to be there. It's hard to explain. Just plain normal turned into something else. We got a glimpse at the heart of things, I guess. We still talk about it, every so often. (Heather Murray Elkins)

The creation stories of Genesis tell of the beginnings of the earth and its inhabitants, but do not go into detail about how the creation came to be (except that in the first of the two stories it was spoken into being by God). But Isaiah offers a graphic description of the act of creation when he says that God "stretches out the skies like a curtain and spreads it out like a tent for dwelling." (Isaiah 40:22b). It seems that God's hospitality reaches throughout the heavens and the earth preparing a tent in which all creation might live. (Genesis Rabbah 1.6)

Some of the sages suggest that the image of people looking like locusts from God's vantage point does not really include everybody upon whom God gazes. Rather, the wicked are like grasshoppers caught in a bottle, jumping frantically to gain some advantage only to fall back down to the bottom of the pile of their competitors. (Sefer Ha-Aggadah 554.172)

Adapted from The Storyteller's Companion to the Bible. The complete Storyteller's Companion series of commentaries is available with a Ministry Matters subscription.

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