Isaiah [Hardcover]

Daniel Berrigan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1996

In this powerful meditation for our times, Daniel Berrigan continues his spiritual and social commentaries on the Hebrew prophets by wrestling with the hapless hero Jeremiah. "For me, for many years," says Berrigan, "Jeremiah has been that one man" who could best serve as a concrete sign of Yahweh. In his visions, condemnations, and summons, Jeremiah speaks to us, Berrigan shows, of sanctity and sanctimony, of power and its perversion, of people feverishly active, but morally confused and directionless. Thundering away---for over forty years!---Jeremiah's shouts seem lost in contrary winds, yet their consolation and desolation are beautifully captured in Berrigan's deeply personal, poetic, and prophetic book.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

"The Dan Berrigan of public protest and media flash point is, happily, known to us all. In this book is the less visible Berrigan, the one who reads Scripture with fresh eyes, who cherishes images and phrases of faith with attentiveness, who echoes the prophetic cadences of dangerous faith." ---Walter Brueggemann

"Good scholarship, good scripture, good soul! Dan has again shown us how to put them all together. Is this perhaps Isaiah redivivus? Who else could do it but Dan Berrigan?" ---Richard Rohr, O.F.M. author of Radical Grace

"What you learn from this astonishing book is that behind the very secular acts of civil disobedience in which Daniel Berrigan and his Plowshares friends engaged there was always a profound theology of peace and resistance to evil, represented by the biblical Isaiah. There is poetry and prophecy here to inspire us all." ---Howard Zinn author of A People's History of the United States

"Poet to poet: Berrigan does Isaiah. Berrigan's free renderings pound like a jackhammer. His commentary lays bare the apostasy of religion in the service of the Powers. Anyone can write a commentary; only Dan Berrigan could write this." ---Walter Wink author of Engaging the Powers

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

I begin with a poem, which I dedicate with all my heart to the mysterious "one man" summoned by the poet:

Come Holy Spirit, bending or not bending the grasses, appearing or not above our heads in a tongue of flame, at hay harvest or when they plough in the orchards or when snow covers crippled firs in the Sierra Nevada. I am only a man; I need visible signs. I tire easily, building the stairway of abstraction. Many a time I asked, you know it well, that the statue in church lifts its hand, only once, just once, for me. But I understand that signs must be human, therefore call one man, anywhere on earth, not me---after all I have some decency--- And allow me, when I look at him, to marvel at you.' ---Czeslaw Milosz

For me, for many years, Jeremiah has been that one man.

My thesis is simple and, I trust, audacious: each of the prophets, in the present instance Jeremiah, is an "other" of Yahweh.

As God's compassionate and clairvoyant and inclusive image, each prophet strives for a divine (which is to say, truly human) break-through in the human tribe. Lacerating, intemperate, relentless, the prophets raise the question again and again, in images furious and glorious, poetic and demanding: What is a human being?

We are unready for God; we are hardly more ready for one another.

And yet, and yet . . . Through the prophets, Yahweh strives mightily for a breakthrough on the human landscape of history, to bring light to our unenlightened human tribe, to speak the truth, unwelcome as it is, of who we are, who we are called to become: friends, sisters, brothers of one another.

This is a tough proposition that goes against the odds of our history, our wars, injustice, and greed, our idolatries. Again and again, these venturesome spirits, the prophets, are warned of the odds: strive as they may, no one---from top to bottom of the social structure, "kings, prophets, priests, people"---will hear; they will turn in despisal from the message of Yahweh.

Worse and worse the warning goes: scorn and obloquy will be the lot of the truth-teller. Frequently the authorities of temple and state will unite against the prophet, invoking the "law of the land." And when the iniquitous law allows it (or even when it does not), the authorities will seek a capital sentence.

Jesus stands in this line of these hapless heroes. Willy-nilly, the afflictions of the prophets are his own. He will echo, some five or six centuries later, the awful word of Yahweh addressed to Jeremiah. --from the Preface

Product Details

• Hardcover: 156 pages
• Publisher: Augsburg Fortress Publishers (September 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0800629981
• ISBN-13: 978-0800629984
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,416,318 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars FATHER BERRIGAN FINDS IN ISAIAH OUR CALL TO RETURN TO OUR COVENANT IN FAITH TO PRACTICE PEACE AND JUSTICE NEVERMORE WAR, January 1, 2008

By 

C. Scanlon "least helpful reviewer" (among us humans) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Isaiah (Hardcover)

"In that day, Arbiter over all,
God will judge the nations.
They will beat their swords into plowshares,
their spears into pruning knives.
Nevermore war
Never again!
Come, let us walk
In the light of Yahweh!"
Isaiah 2:1-5

Father Berrigan and his community finds in these clearly pacifist and eschatalogical verses from the Prophet Isaiah a clarion cry to conversion. Whereas it speaks of a future "they" who shall act so righteously and courageously following God's Law, it ends with an invitation to us, here and now, to enter the path to conversion which leads unto that bright and glorious day when we at long last dedicate our efforts not to war but to development and to respect for life in peace, when we finally realize the true meaning of Jesus Christ's clear commandment to Love our Enemy, and join all together in the arduous task of providing sustenance for all.

Our Holy Father His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI in his present World Peace Day pronouncement clearly and urgently calls us to the same, here and now, this very year, despite the present unending imperialist warfare which leaves so many poor, homeless, hungry, destitute and refugee, tearing families apart and not providing the environment for respecting human life with dignity and peace, which neglects those in our own hemisphere and in our own nation who suffer great natural and man-made calamities and disasters in order to fund their materialistically profitable warfare.

Isaiah is perhaps the most often heard section of the Old Testament in our new Roman Catholic tricyclical series of readings. Pacifist and priest, the Reverend Father Daniel Berrigan, SJ, here opens for us the fullness of the concrete and mystical meaning of the eschatalogical vision of this lonesome, despised yet powerful prophet of peace and justice. Father Berrigan concludes his introduction to this theological treatise of peace with these words:

"In this book I comment on certain of the crucial passages from Isaiah, using my own translation. In reading these portions one may reflect on Isaiah's prophecies against Judah, his call to be a prophet, his visions that carry the hope of the child named Emmanuel, his word of judgment and hope regarding the nations, and his portrayal of the faithful servant of God. Isaiah lived in a time of whetted swords and rusted plowshares, of immense violence and social conflict and neglect of the poor. Then the oracle came to him - swords into plowshares! What does Isaiah have to say to us? (p.4)"

Now, in our time of exhorbitant generosity to the arms merchants and mercenaries such as Blackwater, Bechtel and Halliburton, a time in which all goes unquestionably for a questionable endless war while we refuse health care to our own children, a time when religion is perverted to the claims of an as always unholy and unjust war, when we close our doors to the homeless and the immigrant and the refugee while seeking to enslave their eager labor, when we torture our fellow people under a new and a lying name, when we break the commandments and the covenant of God in every way possible while claiming we do not, we must now hear again and again the word of Isaiah.

For a textual critical methodology we do well to turn to Isaiah 1-39: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. For the truth and the power of "What does Isaiah have to say to us?" we must hear now the Reverend Father Daniel Berrigan, and act for peace in every way, for the Prince of Peace now born among us as prophesized in Isaiah.

"Hear my voice!
Of what import, what value
these sacrifices of yours,
innumerable - useless, repugnant!
Why to and fro, processions
witless about the temple?
The smoke of your incense
stinks in my nostrils!
New moon or waning, Sabbath,
pilgrimage -
I hate with my being!
Your prayer wheels hum and whir
in vagrant winds.
You stretch your arms to me,
I turn aside in disgust -
your hands reeking of blood.
( . . .)
Turn, turn, turn!
Seek justice,
succor the oppressed,
cherish the defenseless!"
(Isaiah 1:10-15, 17. Please see the rest as presented and commentated brilliantly)

This review can only hope to give a tiny glimpse of the rich light here within this commentary. I challenge every Catholic before they condemn it to read it, and to live it, and thus earn truly the proud name of faithful and practicing Catholic, through covenantal conversion to peace and compassion in practice, as own Our Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI today exhorts us in his World Peace Day Address, calling as he does for for peace on earth, including peace for all creation, the ecology and the cosmos.

Take and read, for this is His Body. Excellent lectio divina, highly recommended to all Catholics, all Christians and all who seek the realization of God's Reign in ultimate and merciful justice and compassionate peace. And as our Holy Father Saint Benedict wrote in his Holy and gentle and peaceful and friendly Rule of Saint Benedict in English, may God bring us there altogether again.

5.0 out of 5 stars Righteous Brother, October 27, 2011

By 

Eric Chaet - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Isaiah (Hardcover)

The innocent are as innocent of this or that religion as of this or that skepticism or evil. And the righteous in America today---& in the global political-economic society of which it's a part---are at least as likely to be skeptics of the Enlightenment tradition, out of which the USA & other more-or-less democracies emerged, after all, as to belong to this or that church, or to be immersed in the Bible, whether Old or New Testament, Catholic, Protestant, or Jewish versions. Or, for that matter, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, or smaller groups sharing a text or belief system---or they may be sampling or immersed in those other belief systems, texts, communities.

So Isaiah, especially in the language of, say, the King James Bible of about 1600---which is great (stunning, useful, en-couraging) stuff, alternating with awful stuff (contradictions, chauvinism, cruelty, political spin-doctoring)---is foreign & off-putting. Too bad.

Berrigan's translation brings us a brother, sufferering from finding himself within a society we realize is all too like our own, from resisting joining in, & from speaking truths that would greatly improve the situation if only others listened, but it's clear that they're not listening. Familiar?

Such truth-telling, & concisely expressed & consistent indignation are in short supply, however many centuries have presented the opportunity for (& obstacles to) articulating, recording, & circulating it. Such brothers are rare & terribly valuable.

Isaiah no longer being among us, it's only to Daniel Berrigan I now say, thank you!