Monday, September 15, 2025

Judgment And Mercy In Isaiah 26

The Bible is not exactly anything less than utterly cynical about the probability of a given person seeking truth and turning away from sin.  The majority of humankind is outright said to be a lost cause in the end, as with the statement of Jesus that most people will voluntarily walk the path to destruction (Matthew 7:13-14).  Isaiah 26:9-10 says that divine judgment can inspire repentance, but grace, the sort here requiring requiring mercy (the withholding of just punishment, such as out of love), allows the wicked to continue in their wickedness.  In these verses, it is clearly affirmed that at least for the people the prophet had in mind, showing mercy does not lead to any other outcome than those who received it doing whatever idiocy they please.

Of course, this is true on an individualistic basis, because it is logically possible for one person to respond to mercy by turning to reason and justice and another, as well as for one person to react to judgment with unrepentance (Biblical examples include the Pharaoh of Exodus and the inhabitants of the beast's kingdom in Revelation 16) but not another.  However, since orienting oneself towards truth takes effort and perhaps the painful abandonment of assumptions and errors, it is never as likely that someone who cares little to nothing for ultimate philosophical truths, including the issue of moral obligations, will turn away from irrationalism and egoism.

Whether figurative in the sense of general judgment from Yahweh in this life or a reference to the literal consuming fire of Gehenna that burns the wicked to ashes (Matthew 10:28, 2 Peter 2:6, Malachi 4:1-3), Isaiah 26:11 mentions a consuming fire that is reserved for God's enemies, the unrepentant wicked of 26:10 among them.  God himself is also called a devouring/consuming fire (Deuteronomy 4:24, Hebrews 12:29), similar to the fires of hell that extinguish the wicked forever (John 3:16, Romans 6:23, Revelation 20:15), never to be resurrected again.  Those who do not shirk from their sin will fall into both of these fires, the one kind of "fire" being the metaphysical force behind the actual flames of the other.

A subcategory of God's enemies, the rulers mentioned in Isaiah 26:13 are said to be punished by God in the following verse, their body and soul alike dying.  This matches what the Bible says about the first and the second death.  After the first death, people perceive nothing at all in the unconsciousness of soul sleep until their resurrection (Daniel 12:2, Ecclesiastes 9:5-10, Job 3:11-19), and after the second death in the lake of fire, there is no soul left to perceive or even to sleep dreamlessly (Isaiah 66:23-24, Ezekiel 18:4, and again the likes of Matthew 10:28 and 2 Peter 2:6).  In saying these sinful rulers were punished by God in the form of dying, their spirits not rising, Isaiah 26:14's description reflects both the first and second deaths even if only one was in mind when it was written.

These rulers would very likely have been some of those who do not learn and practice righteousness when God shows them mercy.  Whether or not Christianity is true, anyone who is not aligned with at least the inherent logical necessities on which all else depends is not aligned with truth: and if Christianity is true, it would be consistent with the necessary truths that are correct anyway and it would also be dependent on them, for they are true regardless.  Non-rationalists do not holistically care about anything beyond their own subjective persuasion, and thus it is never probable for them to change for the better, whatever logically possible moral system is true if there is such a thing as morality, and it would not be atypical for an irrationalist to not be deterred from their errors and sins even if direct judgment from God was manifested.

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