Bring forth my people the children of Israel out of Egypt (Isaiah 30)

So we come to Isaiah chapter 30, which compared to many of the recent chapters is rather long and has a lot going on. It's not real clear who this prophecy is about, but I'm guessing Judah, and whoever it is, they're going to get into trouble for forming an alliance with Egypt. Isaiah declares that bad things are coming because the people won't rely on God, but on someone not godly, who I'm guessing is the person or persons who suggest the alliance with Egypt. Isaiah says that "the strength of Pharaoh be your shame", which possibly implies a lot of things, but probably the most important thing is later in the chapter way down in verse 22 we see that for a time they turn to idols.

Now let's talk about the "fiery flying serpent," shall we? Once again, the Hebrew word for "fiery serpent" is "seraph" and this time we get the adjective "uph" which generally is translated "flying" but does have other shades of meaning, but none that make any more sense when applied to serpents. In fact, even though the concept of flying serpents is rather preposterous, pretty much every translation I looked at uses the same exact phrase as the KJV except for the NIV, which gives us "darting snakes" which sounds more reasonable, and may be correct; while there are no known snakes that fly, I do believe there exist ones that launch themselves into the air when striking. One commentary I looked at suggested there is a species of snake that launches itself from a tree when striking; I don't know about what sort of snakes live in the Middle East. However, taking the plain words of the KJV, we'll have to chalk this one up to yet another mythological creature in Isaiah.

In verse eight, Isaiah is instructed to write this prophecy on a board or something, apparently to post it publicly in addition to writing it on a scroll, but as usual, most people will ignore it. Isaiah says that they ask prophets to not prophesy the truth, but rather pleasant things, and tell God "to cease from before us." God says that just being patient and waiting on him was the right solution to their problems, but instead they ran away. Starting in verse 18, the prophecy talks about how eventually people will start to turn back to God and be restored to sound teaching, and in verse 22, they throw away their idols, "as a menstruous cloth" which the SAB notes as both an issue of language and women. Now certainly it's pretty strong language, but I doubt even women are keen on holding on to used menstrual products, so it's subjective at least.

Now the SAB takes issue with verse 26 for scientific reasons, as it reads, "the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold;" the charge is, as usual, that the moon doesn't give off its own light (which as usual, I'm going to point out that that is not what is claimed here anyway), and the sun couldn't possibly be seven times as bright as it is. I think this is clearly end times prophecy, and there's something supernatural going on here; I'm sure astrophysics tells us that the sun couldn't--under normal circumstances--shine seven times as bright (unless it went supernova, in which case it would be temporary and the earth would be destroyed), but this almost certainly isn't normal circumstances. Also, if the sun happened to be seven times as bright, then it follows that moonlight, being reflected light from the sun, would also be brighter. The prophecy doesn't say how this brightness is accomplished, and as it may have been a vision, Isaiah may be only estimating the brightness as he saw it. (I expect a seven times brighter sun would be blinding!)

The rest of the prophecy talks in a lot of symbolic language about what God is like--which the SAB marks as absurd--talking about God's "lips...full of indignation, and his tongue as a devouring fire: And his breath, as an overflowing stream..." Of course God, being a spirit, doesn't have lips, tongue, or even breath or an arm (as mentioned in verse 30), so this is all symbolic of something else, apparently according to verse 27, God's anger against evil. There is also symbolic language talking about "a bridle in the jaws of the people" which causes them to make bad decisions; it's unfortunately not very clear what people we're talking about, what the real nature of this metaphorical bridle is, nor what or who caused it, although with the SAB marking it unjust, there must be an assumption there that it's God's bridle, although I don't know if it's a warranted assumption. In the midst of all this talk of God's anger, verse 29 is oddly pleasant, with people happily following a flutist playing a song up to Mount Zion. And in verse 31, it talks about the Assyrians being defeated, which perhaps was the reason for the alliance with Egypt.