Binder of wounds

When Yahweh judges Jerusalem and Judah, the traditional leaders will topple, and the people will scramble around to find rulers. “You have a cloak, you shall be our ruler ( qatsiyn )” (Isaiah 3:6). “You should not appoint me ruler ( qatsiyn ),” he replies (v. 7).

The exchange is structured chiastically:

A. You have a cloak, be our ruler

B. These ruins will be under your hand

C. He answers: I will not be healer

B’. There is no bread or cloak in my house

A’. You should not appoint me ruler

At the center, the appointed ruler protests that he is no “healer” ( chavash ). The word means “bind” or even “saddle.” His protest amounts to this: I am not a ruler who can knit together a people that is characterized by universal, mutual oppression (cf. v. 5). He cannot bind together the youth who storms with the elder against whom he storms; he cannot reconcile the inferior and the honorable (v. 5).

Implicit in this refusal is a particular conception of what it means to rule. To be a ruler is to be a binder of social wounds, one who knits together what has been broken and frayed. The paradigm of rule is the Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus, the one in whom all is reconciled. To rule is to bind generations to one another, to turn the hearts of fathers to children, and children to fathers.