The Skeptics' Overrated Bible on Isaiah

as analyzed by Sheila Rangslinger

Stuff that is merely "argument by outrage" is noted with an OUTR and is answered here.

1:11 (Does God accept sacrificres?) This verse says he doesn't, but the first nine chapters of Leviticus give detailed instructions for burning the carcasses of dead animals for "a sweet savour unto the Lord." Apparently SAB misses the whole context of Isaiah, which is that the people's sins have made the sacrifices obnoxious. It's like getting a birthday gift from the spouse who beats you.
1:13 He used to demand that the sabbath be observed and kill people who broke it (Num.15:32, 36), but now "it is iniquity." Ditto.
1:14 Even God gets weary sometimes. But not according to Is.40:28. See here.
1:15 When God gets weary he no longer listens to prayers, contrary to those verses that claim that he always hears and answers our prayers. Follows from above.
1:16-17 Here is some good advice: "Cease to do evil; learn to do well ... relieve the oppressed ... plead for the widow." He likes it.
1:18 "Let us reason together." Ditto.
2:4 "And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." Well, it's a nice thought, but Joel 3:10 says just the opposite. But what do you expect from a "God of Peace" (Rom.15:33, Heb.13:20) who calls himself a "man of war"? (Ex.15:3) See here.
3:9 The biblical god just doesn't seem to care much for homosexuals. And he gets especially upset when "they hide it not." So I'd just stay in the closet and hope the big guy just doesn't see you. Begged question yet again that homosexuality is not genuinely sin. Much easier to parade it than to argue it. Next up, the people who have sex with animals will do the same thing.
3:12 Isaiah shows his contempt for women by saying that things have gotten so bad for his people that "women rule over them." What SAB calls "contempt" was in that day a normal stereotype that even the women went along with and even encouraged. There was no individualism in this time -- people wanted a secure place in an insecure world. In Isaiah's day women didn't work the battlefield -- and demand equal rights to be killed in war. Figure that out.
3:16-17 God will "smite with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion" since he doesn't like the way they dress and walk. For the culturally inept like SAB, the way they dressed and walked was like a prostitute.
3:17 But God will go even further than this: "the Lord will discover their secret parts." See here.
3:24 "And ... instead of a sweet smell there shall be stink." Yes, and, what's the problem? SAB doesn't like metaphors? This from a guy who probably thinks underarm fart noises are funny.
4:1 After God takes away the women's jewelry and perfume, and makes them all bald and stinking, he'll kill their husbands. Women will then become so desperate that "seven women will take hold of one man, saying ... let us be called by thy name, to take away our reproach." OUTR. All these people of course were just minding their own business when God punished them.
5:26 God "will hiss unto then from the end of the earth." Yes, and what? A hiss was a way to call someone in this time. SAB is again culturally illiterate.
6:1, 5 Isaiah sees God sitting upon a throne, contradicting several Bible verses that say that no one has ever seen God. See here.
6:10 God will prevent people from hearing and understanding "lest they ... convert and be healed." SAB once again fails to recognize sarcasm when he sees it. This is as much as saying, "He wouldn't want that job, because then he'd have more responsibility." See here.
7:3 God told Isaiah to tell Ahaz, the King of Judah, not to be concerned about Rezin (the king of Syria) or Pekah (the king of Israel). But according to 2 Chr.28:5-6 "God delivered him [Ahaz] into the hand of the king of Syria; and they smote him, and carried away a great multitude of them captives, and brought them to Damascus. And he was also delivered into the hand of the king of Israel, who smote him with a great slaughter." See here.
7:14 The King James Version mistranslates the Hebrew word "almah", which means "young woman" as "virgin". (The Hebrew word, "bethulah", means "virgin".) In addition, the young woman referred to in this verse was living at the time of the prophecy. And Jesus, of course, was called Jesus -- and is not called Emmanuel in any verse in the New Testament. See here.
7:15 If Is.7:14 refers to Jesus, then he must have been a vegetarian. So I guess we should be too. It's actually a figure of speech for pure behavior. SAB is probably familiar with another phrase of a negative sort that tells people to eat something in particular...
7:18 "The Lord shall hiss for the fly ... and for the bee." See above.
7:20 God will shave men's feet, where "feet" and "hair" are biblical euphemisms for males sexual organs and pubic hair, respectively. So says gutter-minded SAB, but even if he is right see here.
8:3 Isaiah has sex with a prophetess who conceives and bears a son. (You weren't expecting a daughter, were you?) There was a 50% chance either way -- what's the problem here? God then tells Isaiah to call his name Mathershalalhashbaz. (It has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?) Especially to a member of an Eastern culture, and not to a bigot like SAB. This chronological snob fails to see the importance to ancients of the meaning of a name. Perhaps he would also like to mock the name of the actor Mahershalalhashbaz Ali who plays Dr Trey Sanders on Crossing Jordan -- see his bio here.
8:9 If you associate or gird yourself, God will break you in pieces. OUTR.
9:17 God will have no mercy on the widows and children of hypocrites Don't forget the rest: "for every one is an hypocrite and an evildoer, and every mouth speaketh folly." We pass on the JW part.
9:19-20 God will make every man kill his brother and then force him to eat "the flesh of his own arm." It does not say "make" or "force" and merely predicts the horror of war in the ancient world - the inevitable result of the people's behavior. You don't think getting fat and sassy and complacent didn't make Assyria think twice before trying to grab land in Palestine -- a key trade route?
11:4 God will "smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall slay the wicked." God must have some pretty bad breath! For SAB the bigot: Not halitosis in view, but a metaphor for power. In this day and age there was no soap and no Listerine, so everyone stank and didn't make a big deal about it.
11:6 "The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb...." I wonder what will become of the spiders. Will they be more friendly toward flies? And will the parasitic wasps find another way to feed their larvae? Or will they continue to feed off the living bodies of caterpillars? This zoological ignoramus is unaware that some spiders even today can temporarily feed on pollen -- see here. Otherwise the Bible appears not to regard insects as "living" in the same sense as humans and vertebrate animals - they are never referred to as nephesh chayyah, unlike humans and even fish. As usual, the chronological snob applies modern categories (like biological life) and implies that the ancients were stupid to have any different ones.
11:8 "And the weaned child shall put his hand in the cockatrice' den." A cockatrice is a serpent, hatched from a cock's egg, that can kill with a glance. They are rare nowadays. Not as rare as a brain cell at SAB HQ -- the KJVers believed in cockatrices. We know this now to be an adder.
11:12 God will gather up the people of Judea "from the four corners of the earth." In the Bible's view, the earth is flat with four corners. See here.
13:6-9 On God's day he will kill sinners with great anger, wrath, and cruelty. OUTR.
13:10 According to the Bible, the moon produces its own light and the earth does not move. See link just above, and SAB can park that until people stop saying that there is a "bright moon out tonight." This doesn't specify the source of the light. Hasn't this bigot heard of phenomenological language? Is he going to start a campaign to rename Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata to Reflected-sunlight Sonata? And I hope he also writes abusive articles attacking any modern astronomer who says, "Look at that beautiful sunset!".
13:13 When God gets really angry, he causes earthquakes. SAB has no taste for the language of ancient apocalyptic -- see here.
13:15-18 If God can find you, he will "thrust you through," smash your children "to pieces" before your eyes, and rape your wife. He will have no mercy, but will even kill your little children. Actually it says the Medes will do this (v. 17). Other than that, OUTR -- this is typical ancient warfare and contextually not inappropriate for the times.
13:19-20 These verses falsely predict that Babylon will never again be inhabited. See here.
13:21-22 Dragons will live in Babylonian palaces and satyrs will dance there. Try jackals and wild goats -- not the KJV Zoo.
14:12 This is the only verse in the bible that mentions Lucifer. Although most Christians consider Lucifer to be Satan (the devil), there is little biblical justification for doing so. I tend to agree, so we'll skip this one.
14:21 Does God punish children for the sins of their fathers? See here.
14:29 Out of the serpent's root shall come forth a cockatrice, and his fruit shall be a fiery flying serpent." What ever happened to these fascinating biblical creatures? See above -- they died with the KJV translators who thought they were real.
17:1 This verse prophesies that Damascus will be completely destroyed and no longer be inhabited. Yet Damascus has never been completely destroyed and is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities. See here.
19:2-4 The God of Peace will set brother against brother and kingdom against kingdom. Then he'll make the survivors seed the counsel of "wizards," and subject them to a "cruel lord." OUTR plus see here.
19:5 The river of Egypt (identified as the Nile in RSV) shall dry up. This has never occurred. Actually the same sort of war trash talk we find in other works of the period -- see here and here.
19:14 God sends a "perverse spirit" among the Egyptians and causes them to err "as a drunken man staggereth in his vomit." And the problem is, what? OUTR it seems.
19:16 Egypt will become weakened and frightened "like unto women." See above.
19:18 According to 19:18, there shall be five cities in Egypt that speak the Canaanite language. But that language was never spoken in Egypt, and it is extinct now. Sorry, but Semitic languages are still spoken all over the place in this area -- and native Egyptian isn't. This prophecy was fulfilled by the time of Jeremiah. There's no direct evidence of a "city of destruction" but none against (if it were a nickname we'd not expect evidence anyway) and the road part was fulfilled as well.
19:18-21 These verses predict that the Egyptians will worship the Lord (Yahweh) with sacrifices and offerings. But Judaism has never been an important religion in Egypt. Judaism? I guess SAB has never heard of the Coptic Christians -- who are among the few native Egyptians left.
19:23-24 These verses predict that there will be an alliance between Egypt, Israel, and Assyria. But there has never been any such alliance, and it's unlikely that it ever will since Assyria no longer exists. The people, however, still do -- and all this predicts is a highway and blessing from these nations to others. Roman times, anyone? These three lands were HQ for leading church efforts.
20:2-5 God tells Isaiah to take off all his clothes and to wander about completely naked for three years as a "sign and a wonder." In this way he will be just like the Egyptian captives who will walk about naked "with their buttocks uncovered." See here.
23:17-18 Tyre "shall commit fornication with all the kingdoms of the world," and her hire shall be holiness to the Lord." Ditto. SAB is just too much of a prude for these ancient metaphors.
26:10 This verse says that the wicked will not see the majesty of God. But Is.40:5 says that everyone will see it. See here.
26:14 The dead "shall not rise." But elsewhere the Bible says that the dead will rise. See here.
27:1 God will punish the leviathan ("that crooked serpent") with his own sword and will kill the sea dragon. Yes, nice figure of speech for evil. Ever hear of Godzilla being used metaphorically?
27:4 "Fury is not in me." Or is it? See here.
28:7 "The priest and the prophet have erred through strong drink." You can't even trust a drunken prophet anymore. Yes, and -- the point? One is not given. It's just SAB wrenching a comment from his ego.
28:8 "All tables are full of vomit and filthiness." See here.
28:16 Misquoted in Rom.9:33. Used in line with normal Jewish exegesis in Rom. 9:33.
29:14 God performs a "marvelous work and a wonder" by destroying wisdom and understanding. Yes -- precisely because they ask for it with their behavior (29:13).
30:6 Among the many strange creatures mentioned in the Bible that no longer seem to exist is the "fiery flying serpent." Try "poisonous darting snake".
30:22 Talking about graven images Isaiah says, "thou shalt cast them away as a menstrous cloth." See here against SAB the prude.
30:26 "The light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold." Well, this is one prophecy that will never come true. Since the moon has no light of its own, but only reflects that of the sun, it could never shine like the sun. And the sun will not, at least not while there are humans to see it, shine 7 times as bright as it does now. See above. SAB repeats himself endlessly, either for rhetorical effect or because he is obsessed. Maybe both.
30:27-28 God's lips, tongue, and breath are described for us. SAB still thinks metaphors are literal.
30:33 God has bad breath, "like a stream of brimstone." Ditto.
32:6 JW issue. We pass.
32:9-12 "Tremble, ye women that are at ease .. strip you, and make you bare ... They shall lament for the teats." See here again.
33:14 JW issue. We pass.
34:2-3 God is furious at everyone and is ready to kill them all. Or as Isaiah so delicately puts it: "Their stink shall come up out of their carcasses, and the mountains shall be melted with their blood." OUTR -- SAB should read some of the same sort of stuff in ancient war inscriptions.
34:5 God's sword "will be bathed in heaven." Sounds like a place to stay away from to me. Good idea for SAB, who thereby proves why his type isn't innocent at all.
34:6-8 God's sword is "filled with blood," and he fully intends to use it. He'll kill so many people with it that the "land shall be soaked with blood." OUTR.
34:7 "And the unicorns shall come down with them." Try "aurochs" as even Isaac Asimov admitted.
34:13-14 Dragons and satyrs may not seem real to you, but they did to the author of these verses. Er, no, to the KJV translators who didn't know about wild goats and jackals. There were none in England and no Wild Kingdom on TV to tell them otherwise of Palestine.
36:12 What other book besides the Bible talks about people eating "their own dung" and drinking "their own piss?" And to think Bible believers object to the language in Tom Sawyer! I don't. And SAB still needs to see here.
37:36 An angel of God kills 185,000 men. "And when they [those killed by the angel?] arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead men." An amusing ambiguity in the KJV; it is Jerusalem's inhabitants that saw. Otherwise OUTR.
38:8 God makes the sun move backwards 10 degrees. Now that's a neat trick! See here.
38:18 Contrary to many Bible verses, dead people don't pray or hope for the truth. See here.
40:5 Will everyone get to see the "glory of the Lord." See above.
40:22 According to this verse, the earth is a flat disc that God looks down upon from his throne in heaven. (The NRSV says, "It is he who sits above the circle of the earth....") See here.
40:28 God never gets tired. Well, OK, maybe he gets tired once in a while. See here.
42:13 God will "go forth as a mighty man" who cries and roars, and "will cry like a travailing woman." After he tires of roaring and crying he'll "destroy and devour." What a guy. OUTR.
43:10 How many gods are there, anyway? See here.
43:20 Even the dragons honor God. See above.
43:24 The god of Is.40:28 never wearies. But the god of this verse is wearied by iniquities. Well, maybe they're different gods. See here.
44:8 How many gods are there? See here.
45:7 God is the creator of evil. See here.
45:23 God swears to God, contradicting his own instructions in Mt.5:34-37 and Jas.5:12. See here.
46:9 God says that he alone is God, and there is no one else like him. (Not even Jesus or the Holy Ghost?) ...say there is more than one god. See above.
48:1 The Israelites "swear by the name of the Lord." but swearing is forbidden in Mt.5:34 and Jas.5:12. See just above.
48:8 Some folks are transgressors "from the womb." But how can a newborn baby transgress? How about "without culpability"?
48:14 God "will do his pleasure on Babylon." That is, he will mercilessly slaughter the Babylonians. OUTR.
49:26 God will make the bad guys eat "their own flesh" and then make them "drunken with their own blood." OUTR. It's typical ancient trash talk, just like the Pharaohs did.
52:1 "Henceforth there shall no more come into thee [Jerusalem] the uncircumcised and the unclean." But many uncircumcised people have visited and occupied Jerusalem after this prophecy was made. Most regard this, yes, as yet fulfilled - I regard it as fulfilled in the church, the inhabitants of the New Jerusalem.
52:10 God shows off his bare arm. SAB shows off his ignorance of a metaphor for strength.
56:2 Keeping the sabbath is very important to God. But Jesus and Paul considered it a trivial matter. See here and here.
57:1 Will the righteous perish as is said in this verse, or "flourish like the palm tree?" (Ps.92:12) See here.
58:6 This verse appear to condemn slavery. However the bible is far from clear on this issue. (See Gen.9:25; Ex.21:2-7, 21:20, Lev.25:45-46; Pr.29:19; Joel 3:8; Eph.6:5; Col.3:22; Titus 2:9; 1 Pet.2:18) See here.
58:7,10 Finally, after ranting on for 57 chapters, Isaiah has some good advice: feed the hungry, house the homeless, clothe the naked. He likes it.
59:5 Bad people hatch poisonous cockatrice eggs. Whoever eats the eggs will die, and when the eggs are crushed a viper hatches out of them. See above and not the KJV Zoo.
60:12 Nations that do not serve Israel will perish. OUTR.
60:16 "Thou shalt ... suck the breast of kings." Here again for the prude.
60:19 "Neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee." Of course the moon doesn't give off light, but only reflects the light from the sun. Third time is still not the charm -- see above.
63:2-6 God's clothes will get stained with the blood of humans. OUTR.
63:17 "O Lord, why hast thou made us to err from thy ways, and hardened our heart from thy fear?" Good question. The answer to this rhetorical question is also found throughout Scripture: "Because that's the way you wanted it -- a senile Grampa God."
65:13-16 "God's servants" will have it good; everyone else will suffer big time. OUTR.
65:16 This verse tells us to swear to God. But Mt.5:34-37 and Jas.5:12 forbid swearing. See yet again here.
65:17 Will the earth will last forever? See here.
65:16 God will "plead with all flesh" with fire and sword, "and the slain of the Lord shall be many." OUTR.
65:24 The carcasses of those killed by God will be piled high. They will rot and burn forever. And although their stench will be revolting to humans, it will be a sweet savour unto the Lord. OUTR.
65:25 "The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock: and dust shall be the serpent's meat." I wonder what will become of the spiders. Will they be more friendly toward flies? And will the parasitic wasps find another way to feed their larvae? Or will they continue to feed off the living bodies of caterpillars? See above.