Treaty Dissolved

Your treaty with death will be dissolved; your agreement with Sheol will not last. When the overwhelming judgment sweeps by, you will be overrun by it. – Isaiah 28:18 (NET)

Isaiah is speaking to the people of God. The words of the text are an answer to the attitude of the people of Jerusalem, who say, “We have made a treaty with death, with Sheol we have made an agreement. When the overwhelming judgment sweeps by it will not reach us” (28:15a). It is interesting to find out why they would say such a thing. Isaiah reports the people’s words: “For we have made a lie our refuge, we have hidden ourselves in a deceitful word” (28:15b). The “sovereign Master, the Lord” (28:16a) has a response to such words. His response provides the context for the dissolution of the treaty with death and the agreement with Sheol. He says, “Look, I am laying in Zion an approved stone, set in place as a precious cornerstone for the foundation” (28:16b). Any talk of cornerstones should immediately force us to turn our attention to the One Who is referred to as “the Cornerstone.” In Acts, Peter stands before the “rulers, elders, and experts in the law” (4:5), and declares that “This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, that has become the cornerstone” (4:11). As we understand Jesus, the Messiah, as “the cornerstone,” it is not difficult to comprehend why a treaty with death would be dissolved in connection with the laying of that cornerstone.

If we look back to the events of Eden and the fall of man, could we not say that man, in effect, made an agreement, a treaty, with death? Adam knew God’s promise to him. God had said, “You may eat freely from every tree of the orchard, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will die” (Genesis 2:16b-17). Adam knew the consequences for disobedience, unfaithfulness, and rebellion, but he chose to eat of the fruit. In essence, he willfully entered into a treaty with death, in that in his actions, death was allowed to make an entrance into God’s good creation. It could also be said that Adam (and Eve) made a lie his refuge, and that he hid himself in a deceitful word, as the serpent in the garden was believed when it said, “Surely you will not die, for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will open and you will be like divine beings who know good and evil” (Genesis 3:4b-5). Ironically, it was in this rebellion that the divine image in which man had been created, was marred.

When God’s Messiah went to the cross, He underwent God’s “overwhelming judgment,” as the wrath of God was poured out upon Him, as He underwent the cursing that was the lot of God’s covenant people, doing so because He represented all of God’s people (then and now) as their King. The judgment was first one of condemnation, as it sent Jesus into the grave. Secondly, though, the judgment was one of liberation, as death and the grave could not hold Him, and He went forth for the inauguration of a new creation and a new humanity, with Resurrection power. Isaiah wrote that “the Lord will rise up, as He did at Mount Perazim, He will rouse Himself, as He did in the valley of Gibeon” (28:21a). Now, this “rising up” is not a correlation to the Resurrection of Jesus, but as we think about the cornerstone, the dissolution of the treaty with death, and the breaking of the agreement with Sheol in connection with overwhelming judgment, we look ahead to the next part of the verse which tells us that the Lord rises up on behalf of His people “to accomplish His work” (28:21b).

What work was to be accomplished? The work, of course, was the restoration of His people and His creation, delivering them from exile and bondage to corruption, reversing the agreement of faithlessness that brought death into this world. This work that was to be accomplished is said to be “His peculiar work” (28:21c). It is said that God would rise up “to perform His task” (28:21d), and that task is referred to as “His strange task” (28:21e). We can look upon the what is sometimes referred to as the “Christ-event,” that being the crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus, and honestly assess it as being a peculiar work and a strange task. God’s people were not expecting the Messiah to go to a cross, and they were not expecting a single resurrection of a single man in the middle of history to mark the ushering in of the kingdom of God on earth. So peculiar and strange was this that the Apostle Paul spoke of the folly of the cross and its preaching. Nevertheless, as we believe in this work and the One in Whom, by Whom, and through Whom it was accomplished, as he underwent that overwhelming judgment and emerged victorious on the other side, we know that the ultimate power of death has been broken, and that in union with Christ, we are “overrun” (28:18) by the eternal life that comes by the faith that is gifted by God’s Holy Spirit.