The Macro-Story of the Bible

While the Bible is a multi-volume set, containing 66 different books by about 40 authors, and many genres, it is also one grand story from beginning to end. The grand story (sometimes called a meta-narrative) goes something like this:

God created everything and proclaimed that it was good (much to the chagrin of gnostics and people who hate the environment). The culmination of the creative process finds two people, Adam and Eve, in a luscious garden paradise called Eden. There, they were to cultivate, cultivate their relationship with God, cultivate their relationship with each other, and cultivate creation itself. Adam and Eve disobey God, rebelling against him, and place the world and humanity under a curse. The rest of the Bible is God’s outworking of a plan to redeem everything. As we travel through the Scripture, we see God promising to usher in this redemption through the person and work of Christ, who now reigns from heaven awaiting the day that he returns to fix everything by uniting earth and heaven. The final scene sees God reigning on a renewed earth, pictured as a garden-city, filled with those who have put their trust and faith in Christ from all of history.

The story presents us with a great reversal. God, through Christ, reverses the curses of Genesis 3. We get a taste of this in our day when God saves sinners, changes lives, and builds his new community through the gospel. At the same time, it is only a taste, and the full banquet has yet to come.

One of the themes of the Bible, then, is a theme of judgment and salvation. This is seen throughout, but with spectacular vividness in Prophets, such as Isaiah.

Briers and Thorns

One of the ways that Isaiah pictures judgement is by usingf the phrase “briers and thorns”.¹ This phrase is repeated 8 times in Isaiah, and mostly with a clear context of judgment. But why would Isaiah use such imagery for judgment?

In context, Isaiah is often prophesying about the future exile, where the Israelites will be taken captive and forced out of their land. The growth of thorns and briers are a sign of unused land, the results of being led out of the land and into Assyria and Babylon. This makes sense, but I think there is something deeper at work here. Isaiah is actually taking his hearers (and readers) back to the original judgment—the curses given after the fall. Genesis 3:17b-18: “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field.”

Because of Adam’s sin, God cursed the ground to bear thorns and thistles, showing that it will no longer be easy to work and eat. Thorns and thistles/briers (see my footnote for why Isaiah uses a slightly different phrasing) are a picture of the judgment God has given to a post-fallen world.

Blooming Deserts

But what about the other theme? The theme of salvation? It too has imagery taken from the beginning of Genesis. If judgment is pictured as thorns and thistles, salvation and deliverance is pictured in Isaiah by blooming deserts and bountiful garden imagery.

The reason for this should be obvious by now—God’s redemption reaches back past the curses of the fall, and restores life in Eden. Eden is bountiful flora, a garden paradise. Salvation is the great reversal from curse to garden, tasted in the present, but fully seen in the future. When the Messiah comes (for Isaiah’s audience) he will bring an end to the greater exile—not from the land into Assyria or Babylon, but the one from the garden, from God’s presence and perfect relationship with God, people, and creation. All these relationships will be restored in the work of the Messiah.

Isaiah 32 and the Great Reversal

We see the themes of judgment and salvation, and their Genesis 2-3 imagery, come together in Isaiah 32. The context is set in verses 1-2:

“Look, a righteous king is coming! And honest princes will rule under him. Each one will be like a shelter from the wind, and a refuge from the storm, like streams of water in the desert and the shadow of a great rock in a parched land.”

The “righteous king” is the coming Messiah, fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Verses 3-8 talks about some of the reversal that will happen with his coming. Notice the language in verse 2, which talks of streams of water in the desert. While not exactly the “blooming desert” I’ve mentioned above, it speaks to relief in the wilderness, and serves as the starting point for the language of a blooming desert later on in the chapter.

Verses 9-14 steps away from the coming Messiah, and takes a stark look at the sin of Jerusalem’s women. Verse 10 begins the imagery: “In a short time…your fruit crops will fail, and the harvest will never take place.” The Assyrian captivity was looming over Jerusalem. Verse 12-13 continues: “beat your breasts in sorrow…for your land will be overgrown with thorns and briers.” Here we see not only the imagery of judgment, but the specific use of one of Isaiah’s phrases for “thorns and briers.” Isaiah points Jerusalem back to the fall. He continues speaking of their judgment. “The palace and the city will be deserted and the busy towns will be empty…” (v. 14).

So when will this judgment stop? Verse 15-20 gives us the answers. Verse 15a: “until at last the Spirit is poured out on us from heaven.” This obviously is fulfilled in Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit, which marks a dramatic turn in the history of redemption. This dramatic turn is seen in verse 15b: “then the wildernes will become a fertile field, and the fertile field will yield bountiful crops.” The coming of the Holy Spirit, which is prophetically seen as coinciding with the coming of the Messiah, ushers in a return to the bountiful Edenic state! But it’s not merely the look of Eden, but the peace, or shalom of Eden, with the restoration of wholeness and harmony between people and God, people and each other, and people and creation. The chapter finishes with:

“Justice will rule in the wilderness and righteousness in the fertile field. And this righteousness will bring peace (shalom). Yes, it will bring quietness and confidence forever. My people will live in safety, quietly at home. They will be at rest. Even if the forest should be destroyed and the city torn down, YHWH will greatly bless his people. Wherever they plant seed, bountiful crops will spring up. Their cattle and donkeys will graze freely” (Isaiah 32.16-20).

We see this now, as though through a broken, dirty mirror in the work of Jesus Christ. We await the day when it is all a present reality.