If I were to say what that fellow said, knowing what I know about hard work and general intelligence not being any guarantee against poverty (people “choose to be poor,” huh!), I would cheerfully condemn myself for calling good evil and evil good. This man seemed to be repeated a pre-programmed response — it seemed to be an imposed position rather than a heart-felt understanding, if I can put it that way. So even while objectively he was calling good evil, I have to cut him some slack for not being fully responsible for what he was saying. (I know how condescending that sounds, sorry.) The responses to him, though, were certainly heartfelt, even passionate in a few cases.

Doesn’t matter how long it is, Mark, thanks for writing this. Although I write out the whole lesson the way I intend it to go, more or less, it feels wrong to write out the testimony with which I often conclude a lesson. You’ve put it more eloquently, but some of what you write — redemption after repentance — was part of that. I wish we didn’t have to skip so quickly through the Old Testament. A lesson on these promises of redemption would go a long way toward an appreciation of Isaiah.

I’ve wondered about the comments the fellow made about how we should not help the poor–poor will always be with us and people are poor because they are too lazy to work. Could we classify such an attitude as calling good bad and bad good?

One thing that stood out as I read these chapters this week were the promises of ultimate redemption that came almost immediately after the harsh punishments are described:

1: 15 And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood.

followed by:

1:18 Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.
19 If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land . . .

and

1: 26 And I will restore thy judges as at the first, and thy counsellors as at the beginning: afterward thou shalt be called, The city of righteousness, the faithful city.
27 Zion shall be redeemed with judgment, and her converts with righteousness.

The terrible punishments to be meted out to the daughters of Zion:

3:17 Therefore the Lord will smite with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion, and the Lord will discover their secret parts.

. . .

24 And it shall come to pass, that instead of sweet smell there shall be stink; and instead of a girdle a rent; and instead of well set hair baldness; and instead of a stomacher a girding of sackcloth; and burning instead of beauty.
25 Thy men shall fall by the sword, and thy mighty in the war.
26 And her gates shall lament and mourn; and she being desolate shall sit upon the ground.

is followed with these beautiful promises in chapter 4:

2 In that day shall the branch of the Lord be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the earth shall be excellent and comely for them that are escaped of Israel.
3 And it shall come to pass, that he that is left in Zion, and he that remaineth in Jerusalem, shall be called holy, even every one that is written among the living in Jerusalem:
4 When the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, and shall have purged the blood of Jerusalem from the midst thereof by the spirit of judgment, and by the spirit of burning.
5 And the Lord will create upon every dwelling place of mount Zion, and upon her assemblies, a cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night: for upon all the glory shall be a defence.
6 And there shall be a tabernacle for a shadow in the daytime from the heat, and for a place of refuge, and for a covert from storm and from rain.

The destruction of the vineyard described in chapter 5 is followed by the promise of the ultimate gathering and redemption of Israel in the last five verses of that chapter.

Overall, Isaiah’s harsh denunciations of sin are tempered by the invitation to repent and the promise of redemption–in words that show God as a loving and tender Father.

Another issue–not quite on the topic the lesson manual suggests:

I once had the chance to hear Norman Podhoretz speak about Isaiah. Besides his quip that Isaiah was not, as some maintained, a fund-raising letter for the Democratic Party, the point he made that I remember best was about the wrong lesson that many take from Isa. 1:11-14

11 To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the Lord: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats.
12 When ye come to appear before me, who hath required this at your hand, to tread my courts?
13 Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting.
14 Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them.

Many Jews, he said, understand this to mean that the temple and temple worship was no longer important to God–but Podhoretz pointed out that much of the rest of the book teaches just the opposite lesson: that temple worship is central to the worship of God.

A good starting place is the very next chapter, Isa. 2:2-3

2 And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it.
3 And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

[And, speaking of repentance, I should probably repent for this long comment.]

Don’t know how well that went over but I gave some of the other class members something to think about.

Paul R is the one who came up with the suggestion to present these chapters as a trial (something all the commentaries contribute to), and Jim F’s outlines at T&S helped identify the parts. But that meant I had to adapt the stated lesson purpose, too — I usually try to keep the same purpose statement even if I play around with the material. This time, though, it was a case of teaching the scriptures, not teaching the manual.

The conference ticket question didn’t work as well as I had hoped, for two reasons: the ward only got four tickets this year, so they weren’t offered to the general ward membership. And one woman cut me off by declaring from the start that tickets were distributed where they were most needed, and I didn’t think it was worth getting into an argument with her.

Class members did really, really well with the social justice parts of the discussion, completely avoiding partisan political remarks while discussing the principles of caring for the poor and working toward a City of Enoch-like “no poor among us” world. One very conservative brother objected to that, dismissing everything that had been said so far with a bored, “Yeah, but the scriptures say that the poor will always be with us. Some people choose to be poor because they’re too lazy to work.” Immediately there were hands up all over the room, with people wanting to say that that was no excuse for not caring for the poor, and statements about what our obligations are even if we can’t completely obliterate poverty. I was pretty proud of the whole class.

This may be a strange comment, but as I read through your lesson, it gradually dawned upon me that you weren’t using the lesson structure out of the manual, so I went to read the manual, which starts:

You may want to use the following activity (or one of your own) to begin the lesson.
Explain that the Lord often repeats the same idea many times throughout the scriptures….
Write on the chalkboard “Stand ye in holy places, and be not moved.”
[Ask the class] What do you think this phrase means?

My eyeballs started to roll back into my head at the thought of sitting in a class like that, but I wondered if it was just me, so I read that to my husband and asked what his reaction would be if a teacher started a lesson that way, and after clarifying that I meant what he would think, not what he would say, he replied, “This is going to be a very long lesson.” And he said that he would start looking for an escape route. (Does the nursery kid need to be checked? Is there some clerk business he needs to do?)

Anyway, great lesson. I like your list of indictments. Did you end up asking the question about general conference?