{"id":13853,"date":"2011-10-06T17:35:19","date_gmt":"2011-10-06T21:35:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2011\/10\/06\/13853.html"},"modified":"2022-10-03T13:14:22","modified_gmt":"2022-10-03T18:14:22","slug":"isaiah-and-the-days-of-awe-day-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2011\/10\/06\/isaiah-and-the-days-of-awe-day-6\/","title":{"rendered":"Isaiah and the Days of Awe, Day Seven: Relieve the Oppressed"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

So, we’re nearly done with the Days of Awe and with Isaiah 1:16<\/a>-17:\n

Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed<\/strong>, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.<\/blockquote>\n

OK, so translation is an issue here, because what the KJV translates as relieve the oppressed<\/i> is rendered correct oppression<\/i> by the RSV and as Reprove the ruthless<\/i> in the NASV. The word is a hapax wossname, that is, it’s a form of the verb that more or less means oppress<\/i>, and it’s not absolutely clear from the way the word is formed whether it refers to the person doing or the person being done to. And the verb is more or less to set right<\/i>, so one could apply it either way, really. So you make your choice.\n

Isaiah is, either way, addressing what we call social justice. He considered his society oppressive, what with the hands full of blood and all. You can make the judgment yourself (if you have sought judgment, I suppose) whether our hands are full of blood. I would observe, though, that in a big society like ours, there will be people oppressed. You don’t need to condemn the whole society as an oppressive one in an absolute sense or in comparison with another society to acknowledge that the machinery of society will come down harder on some people than others, and on some it will come down and crush them. Of course, in a society that isn’t terribly oppressive, those crushed people will be fewer and farther between, harder to see and harder to relieve<\/i>. This makes Isaiah’s challenge particularly cutting for those who consider their society to be, on the whole, just.\n

It’s interesting to me to think about the other version, as Isaiah asking us to set straight the oppressor. One wonders if the 99% protests, the ones occupying Wall Street (I should make some mention of the rhetoric there at some point) are working to set straight those they view as oppressors, if they see themselves as living the Isaiah verse. Or would, if it were put to them. I do think that there is something Isaiah-ish going on there.\n

Or perhaps it’s just that I think there should<\/i> be something Isaiah-ish going on there, and that I should be part of it, instead of writing blog notes.\n

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Which Your Humble Blogger sits in a comfy office and types about oppression.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[207],"tags":[214],"class_list":["post-13853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-scripture","tag-isaiah116-17"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13853"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19426,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13853\/revisions\/19426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}