Woe to you, Ariel, Ariel, the city where David settled! Add year to year and let your cycle of festivals go on. – Isaiah 29:1

Today’s Scripture Reading (January 20, 2017): Isaiah 29

Martin Luther King once said that “Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” Nothing in the world is more dangerous than a people who believe that they are doing what is right and moral without expending the energy to make sure. And it is probably true of most of us that one way or another fall into the area of King’s sincere ignorance. It is not that we do not believe, but we have never expended the energy to discover why it is that we believe.

Isaiah speaks directly to the city of Jerusalem in this passage and he calls the city “Ariel.” This is the only place in the entire Bible where Jerusalem is called Ariel, in fact, Ariel is only used as a word five times in the Bible. It is used four times in Isaiah 29 (twice in this single verse) to refer to Israel, and once in Ezra as the proper name of a priest. So it stands to reason if this passage is the only place where Jerusalem is called Ariel, there must be a point that Isaiah is trying to make.

Ariel means “Lion of God,” and its use by Isaiah is definitely sarcastic. The people believed that Jerusalem was meant to be a Lion with all that that description might entail. It was to exhibit a strength that others would fear. A Lion is a regal beast, and so Jerusalem was supposed to be the city of kings. And the citizens would have responded with pride to the description of their city as the Lion of God. But the truth was that Jerusalem had fallen asleep. While the people still held a lofty opinion the nature of their city, God no longer held the city with that kind of esteem. Pride had blinded the people of the reality – and they viewed the city as it once was, not as it currently existed. Isaiah seems to indicate that the people had actually lost track of time. Festival after festival had been celebrated, but as the festivals were added one on another, it became apparent to Isaiah that what once was considered a Holy Day, now was nothing more than a vacation – the people seemed more concerned with their own pleasure than with the Holy One that the festivals celebrated. They were sincere in their ignorance, but God was not amused. The Lion of God had decayed to the point where it no longer scared anyone.

We need to hear these words. Often we are pursuers of our own pleasure rather than either the will of God or the common good. We chase after the pleasure that we can obtain today without hardly a thought of the price it will cost us tomorrow. And when we are reminded of that, we simply roll over and try to go back to our dream – not really wanting to know the truth.

But our fantasy comes with a price and it is a price that someday we will have to pay. For Jerusalem, God was already setting the stage for the battle – Ariel would be destroyed and the people would soon be carried off into exile – that was the price for her fantasy. But Ariel did not want to listen, and so she didn’t listen until it was too late and Babylon was knocking at her door. 

Originally Published on December 2, 2013

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Isaiah 30