Treaty Dissolved (part 1 of 2)

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)

With these words, Isaiah is delivering a message to the people of covenant God.  It is a people that have been given covenant responsibilities, but have failed to live up to the obligations of that covenant (their God seems particularly incensed at the oppression and lack of care for orphans and widows), and are now experiencing the sweep of curses that were to accompany such violations, though they do not want to connect the judgment of which Isaiah speaks with those failures. 

The words of the text are Isaiah’s 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 quite 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).  However, Isaiah insists that the “sovereign Master, the Lord” (28:16a) has a response to such words.  It is that response which provides the context for the dissolution of the treaty with death and the agreement with Sheol.  Isaiah reports the words of the Creator God of Israel, which are, “Look, I am laying in Zion an approved stone, set in place as a precious cornerstone for the foundation” (28:16b). 

For those that live in the post-Christ-event world, in which it is proper to view the Hebrew Scriptures through the lens of Jesus and the cross, any talk of cornerstones should immediately force the directing of 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 one understands 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. 

Because the messiah, among other things, was thought to be the one that would reverse not only Israel’s cursing, but also the cursing of the entire creation, it is always appropriate to consider the entire arc of Scripture, by which the work of Jesus as Messiah can be understood, and which also provided a portion of the context for Israel’s self-understanding.  Isaiah’s worldview then, of course, would be shaped by this narrative.   Thus, if one was to look back to the events of Eden and the fall of man, could it not be said that man, in effect, made an agreement, a treaty, with death? 

As Genesis insists, Adam knew the Creator God’s promise to him.  That 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).  Everywhere it is made abundantly clear, and Scripture never argues the point, that Adam knew the consequences for disobedience, unfaithfulness, and rebellion, but still he chose to eat of the fruit.