An even more
revolutionary model was offered by the author of chapters 56-66 in the book of Isaiah,
probably a contemporary of Ezra. The visions that open and close “Third Isaiah”
(56:109; 66:10-24) bring the nations into the story of redemption in an
unprecedented manner. They are not associated with impurity and abominations but
with recognition of and yearning for God, whose sovereignty and laws they have
accepted. These visions, phantasmal or counterfactual as they may be,
articulate a new set of relations between Israel, God, and the other nations.
Under the “new heavens” on “the near earth” that the prophet promises to Israel
(Isa. 65:17; 66:22), no other nation will be used to punish Israel or to demonstrate
triumphantly God’s might and supremacy. “Genealogical purity” and the
biopolitics of ethnic separation make little sense in a world in which God’s
worship has become universal.
The
separation from the nations can no longer be conceived as a way to avoid sin
and guarantee God’s protection—it is the other way around: a faithful Israel
would thrive and see a world and a time of rapprochement and reconciliation with
Yahweh-loving goyim, who are mentioned now by the names of their cities and
islands, not their states and empires (Isa. 66:19). It is no longer important to
know who they are but only where they come from, for “all flesh shall come to
worship before Me, says the Lord” (Isa. 66:23). The universalizing message
encompasses everyone; no one will be ejected from the Temple. In fact, some will
be invited to join the service of God:
I am coming
to gather all nations and tongues; and they shall come and shall see my glory,
and I will set a sign among them. From them I will send survivors to the nations,
to Tarshish, Put, and Lud-which draw the bow—to Tubal, and Javan, to the
coastlands far away that have not heard of my fame or seen my glory; and they
shall declare my glory among the nations . . . And I will also take some of them
as priests and as Levites, says the Lord.
(Isa.
66:18-21)
What would
keep the nations separate now that they are no longer enemies of Israel or of
God, when other gods are not even an option (e.g., Isa. 44:6; 45:5, 21) and
access to the holy is open to all nations? What is the basis of Israel’s
separation in the time of redemption, when God promises: “At that time I will
change the speech of the peoples to a pure speech (safa berura), that all
of them may call on the name of the Lord and serve Him with one accord?” (Zeph.
3:9)? How would Israel be distinguished from these nations, and why should it
say distinct? In other words, how could Israel’s separation be articulated, let
alone justified, when all existing reasons for Israel’s separation become
untenable—both in their original form in the Pentateuchal sources and certainly
in their xenophobic rendition offered by Ezra-Nehemiah?
The texts
do not answer these questions. All we know is that the prophets never being
their eschatological vision to its universalist conclusion: undoing Israel’s exceptional
status among the nations that accept Yahweh as their god and completing the
image of a universal humanity that seems to come forth form their vision. The
fact is that even at that brief moment when the remnants of Israel and God’s
loving nations become close, serving in the same Temple, they are kept apart.
This separation is expressed in the eschatological prophecies as a fact, part
of the legacy of God’s election, a trace and mark of God’s victory over the nations
and the redemption of Israel from their oppression. When it is not promised in
terms of political mastery and submission (e.g., Isa. 60:10-16), that
persistence of Israel’s distinction and separation in a world in which one God,
one form of worship, and one language is simply reiterated: “At that time I
will bring you back, even at the time I gather you; for I will give you
fame and praise among all the peoples of the earth, when I return your captives
before your eyes, says the Lord” (Zeph. 3:20). Third Isaiah, perhaps sensing
the problem, reassures his audience, right after opening the ranks of Levites and
priests to all peoples (Isa. 66:21), that “as the new heavens and the new earth
which I will make shall remain before Me, says the Lord, so shall your seed
and your name remain (zarakhaen veshimkhem)” (Isa. 66:21). The invocation
of Israel’s “seed” reiterates and explicit message in an earlier passage: “their
seed shall be known among the nations, and their offspring among the peoples;
all who see them shall acknowledge that they are a seed whom the Lord has
blessed” (61:19).
The question
of the remnant takes on a new meaning now, for it does not concern merely the
survival of the catastrophe of destruction, exile, or the transgression of
exogamy. It is now also about Israel’s distinction and exclusivity in times of peace
when Yahweh is a universally recognized sovereign. Nonetheless, Israel’s
continuous presence is proclaimed as a genealogical fact (seed) and political distinction
(name or fame). The distinction is well exemplified in the illustrative episode
of the nations bringing with them to Jerusalem scattered Israelites “as an offering
to Yahweh” (Isa. 66:20). Even the most radical, inclusive, and welcoming
attitude toward the Gentiles in the Hebrew Bible does not entertain—or perhaps
actively suppresses—the possibility, which Pual would later proclaim, to do
away with the wall separating Is real and the nations. Isaiah’s inclusive
ideology is still confined by the triangular discussion structure and expressed
through it. (Adi Ophir and Isay Rosen-Zvi, Goy: Israel’s Multiple Others and
the Birth of the Gentile [Oxford Studies in the Abrahamic Religions;
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018], 78-80)
