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“In that day the Branch of the Lord will be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the land will be the pride and glory of the survivors in Israel.”
- Isaiah 4:2
“Hangry.” Millions of people around the world suffer from this affliction. You may know some of them personally. They are the ones that when they get hungry, they get angry, and angry, hungry, people don’t make the best decisions. You could say Esau is the ultimate example of this phenomenon when he made the worst trade deal in the history of trade deals by trading his birthright for a bowl of stew.
“Really Esau? A bowl of stew?”
“Don’t judge me… I was really hungry.”
But what does being “hangry” have to do with Isaiah 4:2-6? Well, this passage is a comfort sandwich: It starts with comfort and sustenance, the middle is terrifying, and it ends again with comfort and shelter. If you didn’t notice that the first time through, read it again... It’s short.
Now that you’ve read it, it’s probably easy to understand why I say that the beginning and ending are comforting: At the beginning, in verse 2, it hints back to the Tree of Life, talking about the “Branch of the Lord” and the fruit of the land. At the end, in verse 6, it hints about the tree again by talking about God being a shelter from heat, storm, and rain. But you might be confused as to why I find the middle part of the passage terrifying? The answer is because it talks about being holy. And now you might be saying, “I still don’t get it. Holiness is terrifying?” Well, if it isn’t terrifying to you already, it should be, and here’s why:
This passage hints at the Israelite’s escape from Egypt and of their receiving the word of God in the desert with its mention of the cloud of smoke and flaming fire. And when God speaks to them from the cloud and fire, he calls them to be “holy”... set apart from the other nations. And they replied “Yes! We will be holy.” But we all know how that went. In bold rejection of being “set apart” for God, they cry “We want a King so we can be just like everyone else!” So they, like us today, we're incapable of remembering God. We all get “hangry.”
The struggles of this life, the temptations of earthly pleasures, etc., are a gnawing hunger that distract us from striving to be holy so that we make bad decisions. Over and over again, we trade our birthright for a bowl of stew, because in our state of “hunger,” we can’t think straight. Which brings us to verse 4: “he will cleanse the bloodstains from Jerusalem by a spirit of judgement and a spirit of fire.” I don’t know about you, but when I think about suffering God’s spirit of judgement and fire for failing to be holy, I feel like a citizen of Sodom watching the burning sulfur begin to fall. Holiness is terrifying because he demands it, I can’t do it, and the consequence is judgement and fire.
And yet, that is where the comfort in the beginning and end come into play. He starts by saying, “I am your food” and ends by saying, “I am your shelter.” It’s a comforting reminder that holiness cannot come from ourselves, but only from God. You cannot will yourself out of hunger. Only an outside source of sustenance can take your hunger away. HE comes in and fills us up, pushing the hunger away.
When you are “hangry” in life and feel like saying, “God, I know I’m called to be holy, but I’m so hungry and tired I can’t think straight and I’m making terrible decisions,” remember God is saying, “Let the fruit of my tree push your hunger away, rest in the shade of my branches, and have peace.” He is the Tree of Life… the source of all holiness.
~ David Bothof