Walking in the Light of the Lord | Isaiah 2:3-5

In memory of Harav Ezra Dovid Halevi Neuberger zt"l

Welcome to Gateways, where you experience the Nevi’im—the Prophets—through the teachings of Don Yitzchak Abarbanel, distilled into easy-to-follow lessons.

In today’s lesson we’ll cover the next part of Isaiah’s second vision. It is a declaration that the people of Israel will walk in the light of the Lord.

My additions here are in italics. I’ve used bold to highlight key ideas and make the content easier to follow. As usual, this is a slightly abridged version.

I’ve included a brief overview, the verses, Abarbanel’s questions and his answers. I’ll conclude with a short takeaway of my own.

Jeff

Overview

The overall intention in this prophecy is to inform the children of Judah and Jerusalem what will happen in the end of days — that all the nations will agree together to serve the honored Name and to keep His Torah, and that the idols will be removed from the land — in order to prove from this that it would have been more fitting for the children of Judah to do this themselves, because of the Torah and the Temple of God that are among them.

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Verses

3. Many peoples will come, saying: “Come, let us go up to the mount of the Lord, to the House of Yaakov’s God; He will teach us of His ways; we will walk in His pathways,” for teaching will come forth from Zion, from Jerusalem, the Lord’s word.

4. He will judge among nations and arbirtrate for many people; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, the spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not raise sword against nation; no more will they learn to make war.

5. House of Yaakov, come, let us walk by the Lord’s light.

Question

The… question concerns the fact that we find the opening section of this prophecy repeated in the words of Micah…. There, it says about this matter (Micah 4:5): “For all the peoples will walk, each in the name of its god, but we will walk in the name of the Lord our God forever and ever.”

This implies that the nations will not go forth to seek the word of the Lord nor will they accept His divinity, as is stated here. Rather, each one will continue to walk in the name of his own god.

The question arises: if they will continue to walk in the name of their own gods, what benefit or purpose is there to this prophecy?

Answers

This prophecy should be understood as the prophet’s rebuke to the people. The meaning would be:

“Do you not know that the days are coming when all the nations will say, ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; He will teach us His ways,’ and warfare will cease from the earth? And even though the nations have never seen the light of Torah and mitzvot, they will nevertheless awaken on their own to seek the word of the Lord and, by His word, dwell in peace. You, House of Jacob—meaning, house of stubbornness and deceit—take an example from this! Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord, to walk in His Torah and to dwell securely and alone. Do not provoke evil—you and Judah with you,” for the people of Israel were always at war with the people of Judah.

The nations will stop following their gods, once they come to the house of the Lord. So the nations will cease following their gods at the end of days. However, the point of this prophecy is not talking about the end of days, as Abarbanel explains next.

According to this understanding, we must say that the prophet did not mention this prophecy about the end of days for its own sake—for it would not have been appropriate in this context—but rather in order to derive from it this moral teaching for his own generation.

And with this, the third question is resolved.

Takeaway

We see people all around us enamored with the craziest of ideas. If even those people are one day going to dedicate themselves to the study of Torah and serving Hashem, shouldn’t we do the same now?