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Context No. 610 of 4322 · Isaiah

Context · Reflection

Isaiah 28:14-22: in context

14Therefore hear the LORD’s word, you scoffers, that rule this people in Jerusalem: 15“Because you have said, ‘We have made a covenant with death, and we are in agreement with Sheol. When the overflowing scourge passes through, it won’t come to us; for we have made lies our refuge, and we have hidden ourselves under falsehood.’” 16Therefore the Lord GOD says, “Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious cornerstone of a sure foundation. He who believes shall not act hastily. 17I will make justice the measuring line, and righteousness the plumb line. The hail will sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters will overflow the hiding place. 18Your covenant with death shall be annulled, and your agreement with Sheol shall not stand. When the overflowing scourge passes through, then you will be trampled down by it. 19As often as it passes through, it will seize you; for morning by morning it will pass through, by day and by night; and it will be nothing but terror to understand the message.” 20For the bed is too short to stretch out on, and the blanket is too narrow to wrap oneself in. 21For the LORD will rise up as on Mount Perazim. He will be angry as in the valley of Gibeon; that he may do his work, his unusual work, and bring to pass his act, his extraordinary act. 22Now therefore don’t be scoffers, lest your bonds be made strong; for I have heard a decree of destruction from the Lord, GOD of Armies, on the whole earth.

Isaiah addresses the scoffing rulers of Jerusalem, and he exposes the strange confidence they are living on. We have made a covenant with death, they boast, and an agreement with the grave; when the overwhelming scourge passes through, it will not touch us, for we have made lies our refuge and taken shelter in falsehood. It is a chilling self-description, and remarkably honest: they know, at some level, that their security rests on lies, and they are fine with it. They have made deals, told themselves stories, built their sense of safety on things they half-know are false, and they are confident the coming disaster will somehow pass them by. They are sheltering under a refuge of lies.

God's response is twofold. First, he says the refuge of lies will not hold: the hail will sweep away your shelter of falsehood, and the waters will overflow your hiding place; your covenant with death will be annulled. Whatever false security you have built, when the flood actually comes, it will be swept off and you will be exposed. But then, in the same breath, he offers the alternative: behold, I lay in Zion a foundation stone, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone, and he who believes will not be in a panic. Against the refuge of lies that will wash away, God sets a foundation that holds, and a trust in it that does not flee in terror when the flood arrives.

That confronts the false securities I quietly shelter under. I too build refuges of lies, comfortable half-truths, denials, the story that the reckoning I fear will somehow never reach me, arrangements I half-know are hollow but find reassuring. Isaiah says such shelters get swept away when the real flood comes, and that the only refuge that holds is the tested cornerstone God has laid. What refuge of lies am I sheltering under, trusting it to keep the coming trouble away, and am I building instead on the sure foundation that will still be standing when the waters overflow the hiding places?

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