Bully’s Blog

Isaiah’s visions of Israel’s restoration have nothing to do with a future millennial golden age for the Jews, or even directly with the first century, except by the events of  the Restoration era prefiguring later history. His words were for his hearers, for both their condemnation and their hope in the near future. Why do we get him wrong?

The Psalms and the Prophets often use imagery from the flood to predict later occurrences of the same pattern. Isaiah 11 uses flood symbols to describe Israel’s return from exile and the Re-Creation of the destroyed Temple. Zerubbabel, the Davidic Prince, is referred to as a branch. The Gentile leaders who submitted to Mordecai (Esther 9:3) are referred to as Noah’s animals:

There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit. The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him…
The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together…
They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. In that day the root of Jesse, who shall stand as a signal for the peoples—of him shall the nations inquire, and his resting place shall be glorious.

Even these events in the Restoration were merely a picture of the true Branch, the Christ, who drew the Jewish men and Gentile beasts1 and united them in Himself before the desolation in AD70. Daniel referred to this deluge under Gentile armies as a flood (Dan. 9:26).

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James Jordan observes that the term “men” in Revelation always refers to Jews, the priestly Adamic mediators. Peter’s vision of Gentiles as unclean animals made clean confirms this interpretation. The habit of modern translations to render “men” as “people” obscures the deliberate symbolism. As Mike Wells said to me regarding translation, “If it’s clunky, leave it clunky.”