Isaiah is the book people mean to read and don’t. The chapters are long, the nations are unfamiliar, and the prophecies seem to jump between centuries without warning. This week’s reading — Isaiah 13–14; 22; 24–30; 35 — is a fair sample of all of that: oracles against Babylon, a quarrel about a palace official, a city warned, and then, in chapter 35, a desert that bursts into flower.
The way in is to stop reading Isaiah for his arguments and read him for his pictures. He does not write in paragraphs. He writes a star falling out of the sky, a peg driven into a wall, a wall bulging before it collapses, a wilderness breaking into streams. Hold on to the pictures and the argument comes with them.
The manual’s four sections already run in an order that tells a story — pride falls, the Savior holds, a people turned away breaks, the Lord restores — so the lesson keeps that order, and each part opens on one of Isaiah’s pictures: a star that falls, a nail in a sure place, a wall that bulges and breaks, a desert that blossoms.
A star that falls
When Isaiah wrote, Babylon was not yet the empire that would burn Jerusalem; Assyria was the threat of the day. But Isaiah sees past it, to a proud, rich, apparently permanent city and its king — and to their end. Chapter 14 is written as a taunt-song the freed captives will one day sing over the fallen king: How hath the oppressor ceased! the golden city ceased! (14:4). The manual’s reason for reading it now is plain: Babylon symbolizes pride, greed, and sin, things that still surround us today.
Then the taunt turns, and the king of Babylon becomes a figure much larger than any king:
How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!Isaiah 14:12
What Lucifer said in his heart comes next, and it is worth counting:
I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.Isaiah 14:13–15
Five times in two verses: I will. Every one of them is upward, and every one of them is about himself. The verse after them is the whole of God’s reply, and it is one word long in effect: Yet.
One more verse, cut from the slides for time but worth having, is what happens when people finally get a close look at him: They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms (14:16). Up close, the adversary is smaller than his reputation. The fear he generates is most of the power he has.
“I will,” and “thy will”
The manual pairs Isaiah 14 with Moses 4, and the pairing is exact. In the premortal council Satan speaks in the same grammar Isaiah gave him:
Behold, here am I, send me, I will be thy son, and I will redeem all mankind, that one soul shall not be lost, and surely I will do it; wherefore give me thine honor.Moses 4:1
And the Son answers in the opposite grammar:
But, behold, my Beloved Son, which was my Beloved and Chosen from the beginning, said unto me—Father, thy will be done, and the glory be thine forever.Moses 4:2
That is the whole contrast, and it is not subtle. One voice says I will and asks for the glory. The other says thy will and gives the glory away. The same four words would be said again, under very different conditions, in Gethsemane.
The question for the class is deliberately not what does pride look like today? An earlier draft asked something close to that, and it set the room explaining how to avoid bad behaviour. The question as taught is How can Christ’s “thy will” free us from our “I wills”? — and the verb is doing the work. Free us from keeps Christ as the one acting. It asks for testimony of what He has done rather than tips for what we should stop doing. That is the manual’s own advice for this week, too: Give learners opportunities to bear testimony of Jesus Christ. Every question in this lesson was written to that rule.
Isaiah 14 has its own answer, earlier in the chapter than Lucifer’s fall: the day the oppressor falls is the day the Lord shall give thee rest from thy sorrow, and from thy fear, and from the hard bondage wherein thou wast made to serve (14:3).
Two stewards
Isaiah 22 brings the same contrast down from heaven into the palace. King Hezekiah’s household was run by a steward — a chief of staff “over the house” — named Shebna, and the Lord sends Isaiah to him with a question:
What hast thou here? and whom hast thou here, that thou hast hewed thee out a sepulchre here, as he that heweth him out a sepulchre on high, and that graveth an habitation for himself in a rock?Isaiah 22:16
Shebna is carving himself a grand tomb on high, in the rock, where it will be seen. It is Lucifer’s I will ascend in stone. The seminary manual’s summary of him is two words on a board: prideful and loved riches. He is removed — I will drive thee from thy station, and from thy state shall he pull thee down (22:19) — and replaced by Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah, whom the same manual summarises as obedient and loved God. Eliakim is given Shebna’s robe, his girdle, his authority, and something more:
And the key of the house of David will I lay upon his shoulder; so he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open. And I will fasten him as a nail in a sure place; and he shall be for a glorious throne to his father’s house.Isaiah 22:22–23
Shebna is part one’s I will in a person. Eliakim is its thy will. That is why part two follows part one so closely: the lesson has not changed its subject, only its scale.
The key and the nail
It would be possible to read Isaiah 22 as a piece of court history — one official out, another in — and stop there. The Church does not read it that way, and it says so in the scriptures the class is holding. The footnote to Eliakim in 22:20 reads:
Eliakim shall replace Shebna. Moreover, the symbolic name “Eliakim” in ensuing verses becomes representative of the Messiah, the Savior, especially vv. 23–25. The name means “God shall cause to arise.”Isaiah 22:20, footnote a
God shall cause to arise. The name is already a prophecy of Easter.
The key. A steward with the key of the house decided who came into the king’s presence and who did not. The Old Testament institute manual reads the key of David as the right to rule, which is only enjoyed through the priesthood, and centred in Christ, who has power to shut and to open with no one able to override it. The New Testament settles whose key it finally is, because Christ claims it for Himself. In His letter to the church at Philadelphia He introduces Himself in Isaiah’s words:
These things saith he that is holy, he that is true, he that hath the key of David, he that openeth, and no man shutteth; and shutteth, and no man openeth; I know thy works: behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it: for thou hast a little strength, and hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name.Revelation 3:7–8
A door He opens stays open — for people who have, in His own phrase, a little strength.
The nail. The “nail” of 22:23 is a peg driven into a wall, the kind a household hung its vessels on, and the next verse says exactly that: they shall hang upon him all the glory of his father’s house, the offspring and the issue, all vessels of small quantity, from the vessels of cups, even to all the vessels of flagons (22:24). Everything the household owns hangs on one well-set peg. Ellis T. Rasmussen, as the seminary manual quotes him:
His name means ‘God shall cause to arise,’ anticipating the Savior, who holds the ‘key of the house of David’ but was fastened ‘as a nail in a sure place’ until the burden of the Atonement was complete.Ellis T. Rasmussen, A Latter-day Saint Commentary on the Old Testament (1993), quoted in the Old Testament Seminary Teacher Manual
The institute manual goes further: the nail in a sure place is messianic and symbolizes the terrible reality of the cross, and just as the nail of the cross that was driven in the sure place secured the body of the one being crucified, so the Savior Himself is, to all who will, a nail in a sure place.
Which changes how the chapter’s last verse reads. On its face it is alarming:
In that day, saith the Lord of hosts, shall the nail that is fastened in the sure place be removed, and be cut down, and fall; and the burden that was upon it shall be cut off: for the Lord hath spoken it.Isaiah 22:25
Read as court history, the dependable man eventually fails. Read the way the footnote reads it — messianic especially vv. 23–25 — it is the nail taken down once the burden is lifted: a body removed from a cross because what it was fastened there to carry has been carried. Rasmussen’s until the burden of the Atonement was complete is exactly that reading. It is not on a slide only because the slides ran out of room; it is the strongest verse in the chapter.
President Holland put the picture into one sentence, which Scripture Helps quotes for this week:
In terms of our salvation, Christ is the Nail in a Sure Place—never failing, never faltering, ever the most certain and reliable force in eternity. For this we surely ‘hang upon him all the glory of his father’s house’ [Isaiah 22:24].Jeffrey R. Holland, Witness for His Names (2019), quoted in Scripture Helps: Old Testament
The question at the end of part two follows from it: When has Christ been a nail in a sure place for you? — a time something held when you did not expect it to, and it turned out to be Him holding it.
Isaiah keeps pointing at this Savior all through the week’s reading, and two more verses the slides did not have room for are worth having in hand. Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste (28:16). And the verse Paul and John both reached for: He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces (25:8).
Smooth things
Part three turns from the Savior to the people He was sent to, and the diagnosis is precise. It is not that they have stopped worshipping. It is that the worship has come loose from the heart:
Wherefore the Lord said, Forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men:Isaiah 29:13
Hold on to that verse. It comes back in a place you would not expect.
A chapter later Isaiah names what that kind of people want from a prophet. They want the prophet to stop:
Which say to the seers, See not; and to the prophets, Prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits: Get you out of the way, turn aside out of the path, cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from before us.Isaiah 30:10–11
Elder Holland quoted these verses (30:9–11) in 2014, and the sentence he put after them is the modern version of smooth things:
Sadly enough, my young friends, it is a characteristic of our age that if people want any gods at all, they want them to be gods who do not demand much, comfortable gods, smooth gods who not only don’t rock the boat but don’t even row it, gods who pat us on the head, make us giggle, then tell us to run along and pick marigolds.Jeffrey R. Holland, “The Cost—and Blessings—of Discipleship,” April 2014
The same talk says why a prophet cannot simply oblige. Those called to bear the message are, from time to time, called upon to worry, to warn, and sometimes just to weep — and the road to the promised land, as he puts it, runs by way of Mount Sinai.
The wall, the pot, and the invitation
Then Isaiah gives the consequence, and he opens it with a word:
Therefore this iniquity shall be to you as a breach ready to fall, swelling out in a high wall, whose breaking cometh suddenly at an instant.Isaiah 30:13
Therefore. Sin, therefore collapse. It is the therefore everyone expects, and the picture is exact: a wall with a crack in it does not fall the day the crack appears. It bulges, slowly, for a long time, and then goes all at once. The next verse makes it worse:
And he shall break it as the breaking of the potters’ vessel that is broken in pieces; he shall not spare: so that there shall not be found in the bursting of it a sherd to take fire from the hearth, or to take water withal out of the pit.Isaiah 30:14
A broken pot usually leaves pieces big enough to be useful — to carry a coal from the fire, or to scoop a little water. This one leaves nothing. Not one shard left big enough to carry water. It is Isaiah’s picture of something broken past mending, and it matters for how the lesson ends.
And then, in the very next breath, the invitation that was on the table the whole time:
For thus saith the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel; In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength: and ye would not.Isaiah 30:15
And ye would not. Three of the saddest words in Isaiah. The way back was never complicated — return, and rest — and they would not take it.
The question for the class turns that verse around. They would not; When has returning to the Lord brought you rest? The warnings in part three are the setup. The answer to them is not a better warning, it is someone in the room describing what it was like to come back.
A different “therefore”
This is the hinge of the whole lesson, and like last week’s it is textual rather than homiletical. Go back a chapter, to the lip-service of 29:13 — a people who draw near with their mouths while their hearts are far away. The verse that follows it also begins with therefore, and after 30:13 you know what a therefore after sin is supposed to bring. It brings this instead:
Therefore, behold, I will proceed to do a marvellous work among this people, even a marvellous work and a wonder: for the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the understanding of their prudent men shall be hid.Isaiah 29:14
Not therefore, a curse. Therefore, a marvellous work. And chapter 30 does it again, straight after and ye would not:
And therefore will the Lord wait, that he may be gracious unto you, and therefore will he be exalted, that he may have mercy upon you: for the Lord is a God of judgment: blessed are all they that wait for him.Isaiah 30:18
Same chapter as the broken wall. A different therefore. Notice, too, who is waiting first: before anyone is blessed for waiting on the Lord, the Lord is waiting — that he may be gracious unto you.
A marvellous work
Latter-day Saints read Isaiah 29 with a particular jolt of recognition, and the manual lists the parallels itself.
The Savior quoted 29:13 in the Sacred Grove. When Joseph Smith asked which church to join, the answer he recorded includes Isaiah’s diagnosis almost word for word: they draw near to me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me, they teach for doctrines the commandments of men, having a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof (Joseph Smith—History 1:19). The verse that diagnosed Isaiah’s Jerusalem opened the Restoration — and the verse after it, 29:14, is the promise of what would be done about it.
The sealed book. Isaiah 29:11–12 describes the words of a book that is sealed, which men deliver to one that is learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee: and he saith, I cannot; for it is sealed — and then the book delivered to one who is not learned. In 1828 Martin Harris took characters from the plates to Professor Charles Anthon in New York. By Harris’s account, when Anthon learned that part of the plates was sealed, he replied, I cannot read a sealed book (Joseph Smith—History 1:65).
What the book would do. And in that day shall the deaf hear the words of the book, and the eyes of the blind shall see out of obscurity, and out of darkness (29:18). And for anyone who has drifted, the gentlest line in the chapter: They also that erred in spirit shall come to understanding, and they that murmured shall learn doctrine (29:24).
The manual asks why marvellous and wonder are good words for the Lord restoring His gospel. Bishop Gérald Caussé gave a good answer without being asked:
To marvel at the wonders of the gospel is a sign of faith. It is to recognize the hand of the Lord in our lives and in everything around us.Gérald Caussé, “Is It Still Wonderful to You?,” April 2015
The desert shall rejoice
Isaiah 35 is only ten verses long, and it is the reason to read the rest. After chapters of empires falling and walls collapsing, this:
The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose.Isaiah 35:1
The class reads the whole chapter and looks for one phrase that gives them hope. There is no wrong answer, and there are a great many right ones: Strengthen ye the weak hands, and confirm the feeble knees (35:3). Say to them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear not (35:4). Then shall the lame man leap as an hart (35:6). The parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water (35:7). A highway called The way of holiness, on which the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein (35:8) — a road built so that even people who get lost cannot get lost on it.
And the chapter ends where the whole week has been heading:
And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.Isaiah 35:10
Return. The same word as 30:15’s In returning and rest shall ye be saved — the invitation Israel would not take, taken at last.
Broken past mending
Go back to the pot of 30:14 — smashed so thoroughly that not one piece is left to carry water. The manual’s own framing of this week anticipates exactly that fear: When we turn away from the Lord, Satan wants us to think that we can never return or be healed. Some things really are past mending. Isaiah does not pretend otherwise.
But mending and restoring are not the same thing. Mending works with the pieces you have left. Restoring does not need them. Elder Renlund:
As you act on those words and listen to Him, remember, joyfully and reverently, that the Savior loves to restore what you cannot restore; He loves to heal wounds you cannot heal; He loves to fix what has been irreparably broken; He compensates for any unfairness inflicted on you; and He loves to permanently mend even shattered hearts.Dale G. Renlund, “Consider the Goodness and Greatness of God,” April 2020
(Those words, in his sentence, are the Father’s Hear Him!)
Irreparably broken is the pot. The manual points this week to Sister Amy A. Wright’s talk on exactly this, and she ends it with the sentence this lesson would end on if it could only keep one:
I testify that there is nothing in your life that is broken that is beyond the curative, redeeming, and enabling power of Jesus Christ.Amy A. Wright, “Christ Heals That Which Is Broken,” April 2022
If you take one thing
Broken past mending is not past restoring. That is what makes it a marvellous work and a wonder rather than a repair: the Lord does not need the pieces to be big enough. He needs you to return — and Isaiah 30:18 says He is already waiting, that He may be gracious unto you.