Friday, February 2, 2024

Esther J. Hamor on Isaiah 29 and the Familiar Spirit

  

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)