Isaiah32chapter 32

The four pictures of a good ruler are all survival images from a dry land. A hiding place from the wind, when the desert storm comes off the east and strips a field in hours. A cover from the tempest, when the winter rain arrives in a wall. Streams of water in a dry place. And the shade of a great rock in a weary land — on the Negev routes, a boulder's shadow at midday was the difference between walking on and lying down. A king was measured by whether being under him felt like that.

Then a village-square observation. In a society run on honor, what people are publicly called is what they get to be, and Isaiah says the change comes when the fool is no longer called noble and the swindler is no longer called generous. He defines the terms himself: the fool speaks folly, his hands work wickedness, he leaves the hungry empty and the thirsty without a drink; the swindler's schemes are aimed at destroying the poor with lying words, even when the needy speaks a case that is right.

The address to the women at ease has a date on it. In a little more than a year you will be troubled — the vintage will fail, the harvest will not come. Then the instructions are mourning instructions: strip off your fine clothes, put sackcloth on your waist, beat your breasts for the pleasant fields and the fruitful vine.

The ruin is described concretely. The palace forsaken, the crowded city deserted, the fortress hill and the watchtower given over to wild donkeys grazing and flocks pasturing where houses were. That is what an abandoned town looked like within a few seasons.

The turn comes with a phrase used sparingly in the Old Testament: until the Spirit is poured on us from on high. Then the wilderness becomes farmland and the farmland looks like forest, justice lives in the desert and righteousness in the field, and the fruit of it is quietness and confidence forever. The chapter ends with a farmer's blessing — happy are you who sow beside all waters, who send out the feet of the ox and the donkey.