Episode 711 The People Walking in Darkness (Isaiah 9:1-7)

This week we are reading Isaiah 9:1-7–a gorgeous and well-known piece of poetry that imagines a shift from darkness to light; a shift from a time where the powers that be weigh down on your shoulders like a yoke, to a time when a new leader will emerge and take that weight upon his own shoulders. These verses invited us to go back to the Hebrew original over and over, and we found quite a treasure there. At the top of the list, strangely, maybe, is a point of grammar–what does it mean to speak of something that hasn’t yet happened in the world around us, as though it is so certain it is essentially completed? Something as huge as an end to fear and violence ... as good as done?