Scripture Daily

Context No. 930 of 4322 · Isaiah

Context · Reflection

Isaiah 21:10-17: in context

10You are my threshing, and the grain of my floor!” That which I have heard from the LORD of Armies, the God of Israel, I have declared to you. 11The burden of Dumah. One calls to me out of Seir, “Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night?” 12The watchman said, “The morning comes, and also the night. If you will inquire, inquire. Come back again.” 13The burden on Arabia. You will lodge in the thickets in Arabia, you caravans of Dedanites. 14They brought water to him who was thirsty. The inhabitants of the land of Tema met the fugitives with their bread. 15For they fled away from the swords, from the drawn sword, from the bent bow, and from the heat of battle. 16For the Lord said to me, “Within a year, as a worker bound by contract would count it, all the glory of Kedar will fail, 17and the residue of the number of the archers, the mighty men of the children of Kedar, will be few; for the LORD, the God of Israel, has spoken it.”

This is a set of short, shadowy oracles against the desert peoples around Judah. Buried in the middle is a haunting exchange. Out of Seir a voice keeps calling to the watchman: watchman, what of the night? watchman, what of the night? The watchman answers cryptically: the morning comes, and also the night. If you would inquire, inquire; come back again. Around it are oracles of coming disaster for Dumah, for Arabia, for the archers of Kedar, whose glory will fail within a year.

That question in the dark, watchman, what of the night, is a deeply human line. It is the voice of everyone waiting through a long darkness, asking anyone who might see farther, how much longer, is it nearly over. And the watchman's answer is honest rather than comforting: morning is coming, and so is more night. There is dawn ahead, but the darkness is not finished; you cannot have the one answer you wanted, that it is simply over now. If you must keep asking, he says, then keep asking, and come back again. It is a picture of faithful waiting that refuses to lie. The morning is real and it is coming; the night is also real and not yet done. Between them the watchman stays at his post, telling the truth to the ones who keep calling up from the dark, and inviting them to keep coming back rather than despairing.

In my own long night, can I hold the watchman's honest word, that morning is truly coming and the darkness is not yet over, and keep coming back to ask rather than give up?

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