Mass Attack:
Spirits of Distortion and Stupor
On two occasions, God sends a spirit
to act against an entire population. Both times, the spirit is nearly
imperceptible—but our examinations of other spirit attacks have yielded a
pattern that surfaces here too.
Both incidents are described by
Isaiah. In the first oracle, God lays out a plan of attack against Egypt.
First, he plans to incite the Egyptians against one another—like he did with
Abimelech and the Shechemites. Next, he’ll leave Egypt emptied of spirit—like
he did to Zedekiah and Saul. Then he’s going to confuse Egypt so that the
people will rely on futile divination and false sources—like he did with Ahab
(Isaiah 19:2-3). Taken individually, each similarity to a spirit attack might
seem coincidental. But these reverberations of multiple incidents of spirit
infiltration, all packed into two verses, build to a blunt statement: the
leaders of Egypt have been ”deceived,” because “the Lord mixed within it a
spirit of distortion” (19:13-14).
We see only the faintest silhouette of
spirit, but recognize its handiwork. The rest: all of Egypt is led astray “like
the stumbling of a drunk in his vomit” (19:14).
A nation can’t up and die like the
individual victims of other spirit attacks, so instead Egypt is threatened and
humiliated. The image is as disturbing as any blood slaughter we’ve seen: the
Egyptians will become like women “trembling with fear before the raised hand
that the Lord of Armies swings against them” (19:16). A violent God looms over
them. He strikes—fade to black.
The second time god deploys a spirit
against an entire region, the target is Jerusalem. In this oracle, Isaiah’s
back to his frequent focus on the threat of Assyrian attack. Only here, God’s
on the Assyrian side. Jerusalem has sinned, Isaiah says, and God is threatening
a devastating siege against the city, along with a battery of other
consequences.
“Ariel, Ariel,” God begins his address
to Jerusalem (29:1). This is sometimes translated “Loin of God,” but at best
it’s a nasty play on words, since Jerusalem isn’t called this anywhere else in
the Bible and the word means something totally unrelated in the next verse—and
it’s not pretty. In Hebrew Ariel means the “altar hearth” on which
things are slaughtered and burned (as in Ezekiel 43:16). God continues, “I will
cause distress to Ariel; there will be mourning and lamentation, and the city
will be like an ariel to me,” like an altar where blood is spilled
(Isaiah 29:2). God describes his military invasion of the city, and its fatal
consequences. He tells the people they will speak from deep beneath the earth,
that their voices will come from underground like a ghost, and that they’ll
“chirp” from the dust, which is how Isaiah describes the eerie sounds of ghosts
elsewhere (29:3-4; see 8:19). You’ll be mourned, God says to Jerusalem, after I
lead this deadly assault that turns the whole city into an altar for slaughter.
A brief moment of hope follows, but
then it all comes crashing back down. The storm after the calm brings the
pinnacle of God’s threat: a visit from our ephemeral interloper. A few chapters
earlier, Isaiah described the terrible effect of the spirit of distortion, when
Egypt would be led astray “like the stumbling of a drunk in his vomit.” Now he
turns and says something similar to Jerusalem: “Stupefy yourselves and be
stupefied, blind yourselves and be blind! Be drunk, but not from wine—stagger,
but not form a drink” (29:9). Be dazed and confused—but not from any substance.
Isaiah explains why the people fall into such a discombobulated state: “Because
the Lord has poured upon you a spirit of stupor” (29:10).
Like the spirit that was “mixed into”
Egypt, this spirit takes a form that can permeate a population, and it’s
“poured upon” Jerusalem. Also like the spirit of distortion, the spirit of
stupor makes people stagger around stupefied like they’re drunk out of their
gourds. But that’s only one symptom of the spirit’s infiltration.
Isaiah details its immediate effect:
Stagger around, he tells the people of Jerusalem, “because the Lord has poured
upon you a spirit of stupor, and has shut your eyes, the prophets, and covered
your heads, the seers.” God uses the spirit of stupor to obscure prophecy. Like
all of its cohort, this spirit shrouds reality from the eyes of its prey. In
Jerusalem’s bleakest hour, in the chaos and desperation of war, all radio
signal is cut off. God has pulled the plug.
We’ve seen spirits engage in each
major type of psyops—spreading disinformation, fomenting discord—and now we see
the final piece of the triad, blocking access to information.
Spirits of falsehood of rumor,
distortion, and stupor being false prophecy, no prophecy, prophetic speech
absent a prophetic message. Evil spirits sow discord and deadly violence.
People are deceived, rendered delusional, and dazed. The spirits of God’s entourage
leave their signature at every crime scene. (Esther J. Hamori, God’s
Monsters: Vengeful Spirits, Deadly Angels, Hybrid Creatures, and Divine Hitmen
of the Bible [Minneapolis: Broadleaf Books, 2023], 184-87)
