God’s Hidden Weapon
A razor sharp blade, artfully hidden by the experienced hand of a professional. An arrow, neatly tucked away so as to avoid any suspicion. These images may call to mind some medieval assassin, hunting their quarry on the busy, smelly streets of some European city just emerging from the dark ages. Even if employed for a good cause, there is something inherently untrustworthy about hidden weapons and those who use them. Being hidden makes them deceptive, and being weapons makes them violent. We tend to oppose deceptive violence. This isn’t the image of a noble knight charging into battle, bearing the banner of his kingdom. This is a trickster who murders quickly through lies and treachery.
It is worth pondering why someone would be driven to perform these deceptive violent acts. Certainly, there are some people who, through the brutality of experienced trauma and miserable misfortune in the genetic lottery, become violent sociopaths who actually enjoy hurting others. This is rare, most people who suffer mental disorders are more likely to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators. Still, we can all point to a few famous serial killers who seemed to be violent for their own pleasure. But serial killers aren’t the only ones who use deceptive violence.
Violence can result from numerous sources. Some people are sent into a rage by interpersonal conflict. Some seek revenge for past offenses, even violent ones. Some are even motivated to engage in violence because of persuasive rhetoric. They are convinced that their cause is just, and that the opponents of their cause are a danger to the world. Between political assassinations and violence in war, much of the world’s violence between humans can probably be tied back to this. People are convinced that violence is the right thing to do.
Naturally, there are some who seek to work deceptively simply for the thrill of it. But often deception is a consequence of differences in actual or perceived power. This is true even in the animal world. Think of how many animals will instinctively engage in a threat display when they feel threatened. It’s a bluff of course. We present a much greater threat to rattlesnakes than they do to us, whether or not we believe it. That’s the whole point of the rattle. They don’t want to fight us, if they did they wouldn’t make so much noise; they are ambush predators. They want us to get startled and run away. Assassinations occur when the group opposing the leader is not powerful enough to fight fairly. This isn’t always the case, but it is the reality often enough for us to consider what the problem with deception really is.
Of course, we naturally prefer the charging knight to the shadowy assassin, but the knight kills many poor, unwilling peasants conscripted to fight in a war for their lord, while the assassin hopefully just kills the one target, who probably deserves it much more than the impoverished peasants. We prefer the knight because honor and dignity are important. There are codes of conduct for war, but we must understand, these ancient honor codes were developed by and for the elite, who didn’t feel it was at all dishonorable to slaughter hundreds of peasants in a day.
If it seems like I am defending the shadowy assassins too much, there is a good reason for it. Isaiah 49:2 evokes those images I began with: hidden weapons. But these hidden weapons are not describing the devil or the agents of some foreign king. Rather, these are describing the servant of the LORD. God’s secret weapon.
This throws everything out of balance. Why is God using hidden weapons, and why is the servant, either a specific person or the entire people of Israel, the tool for the job? Most scholars agree that the book of Isaiah can be divided into three different parts, composed by at least three different authors/editors at three distinct points in the history of Israel. Eventually, separate works were compiled into one book for their similarities. After the life and death of Isaiah, the court prophet, others continued his work, being disciples or simply very interested in his oracles. Isaiah could be seen as more of a school of thought or style than one individual person, with other authors lovingly contributing their own works to the compilation started by their inspiration.
This particular passage comes from “Second Isaiah,” which was written just after the Babylonian exile was concluded, and the Persians sent the exiles home to rebuild Jerusalem. As the exiles returned home, they had to make sense of what had befallen them. If God loved them and God was powerful, how could God have allowed all that? Jerusalem had fallen. The Davidic king witnessed his entire family being killed before he was blinded and taken into exile where he died. The temple was destroyed and plundered. Their entire political, theological, and cultural identity was shattered. Now they had to pick up the pieces. Furthermore, they were forced to witness the real powerful states of the world. The exiles knew their place as small, politically irrelevant people on the global stage. If they were going to survive, they needed to recognize how small they were. They would need to fight like a rattlesnake, lots of noise and hidden weapons if absolutely necessary.
Coming from this place of anxiety, we can perhaps recognize why the people wanted to see themselves as God’s secret weapons. They were small, but that was easier to hide. They appeared harmless, but that just made them all the more dangerous. Fighting honorably, if honor was defined by those much more powerful than them, would simply get them killed. Hidden weapons would be the way of their future, so they imagined being the hidden weapon of God. If God was still going to use them in the world, it would be subtle, stealthy.
And it is true that God’s servant is hidden. God takes the form of human flesh and dies the death of a criminal. The Son of God, the ultimate weapon against the powers of sin and death, was hidden in human form, a secret that Jesus diligently protected. However, this passage in Isaiah isn’t only concerned with secret weapons. Verse 6 changes the game.
“I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”
God’s servant may be hidden, disguised in the ordinary, a carpenter feeding and healing the outcast. God’s weapons may be secret, acts of love and sacrifice that wage war against the kingdom of sin without us seeing the blood of battle. However, at the cross and from the empty tomb, what was hidden is fully disclosed. The power has shifted and hidden weapons are no longer needed. God’s love, God’s life, God’s death, God’s rising again, are all a light to the nations.
