December 1998 Issue

Ahaz is depicted in Isaiah 7 as a harried and frightened man. He is offered a fantastic deal—it's hard to imagine one better short of winning the Publisher's Clearing House Sweepstakes. God's prophet Isaiah bids Ahaz ask for a sign. It can be anything from "the deepest depths" to the "highest heights" (7:10, NIV). How can Ahaz refuse?

He may refuse simply because he is a hypocrite. God is in his mouth but not in his heart. (Even so he is less a hypocrite than the poet Paul Ramsey's "Modern Theologian" who has mistaken doubt for faith.¹ "True faith, he claims, has the most doubt. / Are wives most true when stepping out?") But Ahaz refuses not only because he is a hypocrite, but because he is afraid. He is afraid not only because he is in a difficult "political" situation, he is afraid of the sign God may give him. The "entrance" of God into any situation has terrifying possibilities.

It is not so difficult to imagine how frightening it must have been to be confronted by God's prophet, if we look at Donatello's statue of "the prophet." Sculpted for the campanile of the Cathedral of Florence in 1423-25, the prophet is not identified with Isaiah in particular. (Some art historians have associated the statue with Jonah, but it is not named, only nicknamed (by Donatello) Zuccone, "pumpkin-head.")² Nor does it resemble the conventional Romanesque image of the Old Testament prophet, gloomy but calm, bearded, bearing a large scroll. Compare the depiction of Isaiah in Duccio's "Maestà" altar screen (1308)³ or Claus Suter's statue at the Moses Fountain of the Chartreuse de Champmol at Dijon (c. 1400).⁴ In both Isaiah is depicted as old and weary, with a long white beard. If he raises his hand in Duccio's painting, it seems to bless rather than challenge. In Suter's statue, Isaiah seems completely born down by the weight of the book of prophecies he carries. On the other hand, Donatello's prophet, which stands a slim, straight 6' 5", is draped in the classical toga of the Roman orator. His head is large and ugly, with a too wide mouth and pulpy nose, but it is also noble with a broad, high forehead. The eyes are penetrating, and the gaze as well as the carriage confronts.

Donatello is said to have sworn "by the Zuccone." It is also recorded that during its sculpting, he shouted at the statue, "Speak, speak, or the plague take you!" But the statue appears to have spoken already, as Isaiah has spoken to Ahaz. Now it awaits an answer. It waits silently, but it does not wait passively. The position of the hands, close to the prophet's hips, shows a kind of aggressive impatience with any kind of wavering.

Ahaz does waver, but God will give him a sign whether he asks for one or not. The sign is Immanuel, "God is with us." It is a particularly distressing sign, because it announces the presence of God "with us"; God is no longer escapable (cf. Ps 139) but is becoming a commonplace fact of life.

The result is both terrifying and ordinary. Edwin Muir's poem The Annunciation⁵ describes both the eternity in which Mary and the Angel meet, until "Each reflects the others face / Till heaven in hers and earth in his / Shine steady there...," and its background in the everyday: "Outside the window footsteps fall / Into the ordinary day...." Theodore Roethke's, The Decision (which may be based on Ps 139), reflects on the terror that comes when God invades a life. For, the narrator asks, "What shakes the eye but the invisible?" He replies: "Running from God's the longest race of all."

The magi run a long race looking for the one Matthew has called "Emmanuel." But what they discover is both unexpected and completely unsettling, according to T.S. Eliot's "Journey of the Magi." The narrator is in a heart-rending dilemma. He and his companions have made the long, difficult and dangerous journey, but for what?

When Isaiah confronts Ahaz, asking him to choose a sign, he confronts him as well with a choice: To leave the comfort and security of an "old dispensation" of political alliances for something new that may be neither comfortable nor secure. But Ahaz refuses to "test" God by asking for a sign. He has formed a (relatively) comfortable alliance with Assyria. Why should he invite something that will certainly change his plans and almost certainly alter his perspective, leaving nothing ever again the same?

Richard Dietrich

1. Paul Ramsey's "A Modern Theologian" is found in his anthology, Contemporary Religious Poetry, (New York: Paulist Press, 1987, p. 174.)
2. Pictures of Donatello's "Zuccone" may be found in H.W. Janson's History of Art (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1968), p. 309; and in Seven Centuries of Art, the index to the Time-Life art series, (New York: Time-Life, 1970), p. 22.
3. Duccio's "Maestà" was commissioned in 1308 for the Siena Cathedral. A picture of the altar piece with identifying key appears in The World of Giotto by Sarel Eimerl, (New York: Time-Life Books, 1967), pp. 76-79 & 193.
4. A fine photograph of Claus Suter's "Isaiah" appears in The Bible in Art: the Old Testament, introduction by Marcel Brion, notes by Heidi Heimann, (New York: Phaidon Publishers Inc., 1956), plate 193.
5. Edwin Muir's "The Annunciation" and Theodore Roethke's "The Decision" are anthologized in Contemporary Religious Poetry, pp. 76 & 96. "The Annunciation" may also be found in Muir's Collected Poems and "The Decision" in The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke.
6. T. S. Eliot's "Journey of the Magi" has been often anthologized (among other places in the wonderful New Oxford Book of Christian Verse, ed. by Donald Davie, New York: Oxford University Press, 1981, p. 260), but I found it in The Complete Poems and Plays, 1909-1950, (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1952), p. 68.