We reach an unambiguously messianic portion of Isaiah, and discuss seeing and hearing from yet another angle.

This week's lesson "Doing the Unthinkable" focuses on Isaiah 52-53 and the remarkable foreshadowing of Jesus crucifixion.

Why is the "servant of God" so gentle, while God seems almost violent?

The lesson touches Chapters 41-49, but we focus mostly on Isaiah 42. As well as the recurring eyes/ears theme, we notice patterns of flame (flickering candles and consuming fires) and of lands across the sea and islands. God's servant is astonishingly gentle, and this almost contrasts with God Himself. There's a remarkable blending of birthing mother and strongman warrior imagery.

Some of the best known bible verses are here, alongside some trickier passages about idolatry and being like grass.

The lesson this week is called "Comfort My People", which is the opening of both Isaiah 40 and Handel's Messiah. After an interlude of historical narrative, the book is back to a more poetic kind of writing. We see similarities here to parts of Job and the Psalms.

The "Defeat of the Assyrians" has us grappling with how "God will come with vengeance; he will come to save you"

We cover a lot of ground in Isaiah this week. In skipping over chapters 15-35 we pick up many recurrences of the "eyes and ears" theme, but our discussion is focussed on the jolt back to historical narrative that occurs in chapters 36-39. This story of Hezekiah and the Assyrians is very similar (substantially word-for-word in many places) to 2 Kings 20. In particular, we ponder the challenging nature of God's micraculous interventions: killing 185,000 soldiers on the one hand, and restoring Hezekiah to 15 years more life on the other (along with a sign "as high as heaven").

Time for a Taunt! 

We're keeping up with the Sabbath School lesson, which this week is on "Playing God". The passage in Isaiah 14 is explicitly a taunt of Babylon, and has some fantastic turns of phrase. We ponder the validity or role of taunts, touch on the state of the dead, and recall the importance of having mercy.

We ponder the theme of God's "government", and explore the tension between our individualistic culture and the collective punishments proclaimed in Isaiah.

The Sabbath School lesson this week is on the "Noble Prince of Peace", and the verses in Isaiah 9 are well known. In many ways this passage completes some of the more difficult texts we've covered in recent episodes.

This week's lesson "The Hard Way" looks at Isaiah 7 and 8, and Clansi joins the conversation.

We are slow to reach Isaiah 7 because further reflections force us to revisit the difficult verses of Isaiah 6.

The lesson this week explores the message of Isaiah to King Ahaz of Judah. We do get there, but spend most of our time revisiting the tough verses from last week:

‘Keep on hearing,[c] but do not understand;
keep on seeing,[d] but do not perceive.’

The Sabbath School lesson "Crisis of Leadership" focuses mostly on Isaiah 6, and we ponder God saying "harden the hearts of these people".

Our focus is particularly on verses 9, 10:

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We're starting a new season exploring the book of Isaiah, and we look for some key themes in the first chapter.

This season we'll be staying in sync with the SDA Sabbath School lessons progressing through Isaiah. There are way more than 13 chapters in this book, and so it will be necessary to pick and choose excerpts and themes as we go through each week - otherwise the podcast episodes would end up being many hours long!