Excluded

Isaiah 59:14 deftly sketches a portrait of a corrupted city. Judgement and righteousness are far away, and the reason is because of the way truth and uprightness is treated. When truth is spoken or done, it stumbles in the street, probably tripped.

Uprightness doesn’t even get into the city: The last line of the verse hints at a city gate closed and barred. Gates are places of judgment, the place where court is held to determine who is welcomed to the city and who is cast out. In Isaiah’s day, Jerusalem judges uprightness intolerable, and bars it from entering.

The first part of verse 15 continues the portrait: Anyone who turns from the evil that dominates the city is setting himself up for attack. He becomes a “prey”; he opens himself to plundering. Evil has become the habitus of the city, the accepted culture, and whoever bucks the system will have to pay.

It was to such a city that Jesus came, and He is crucifiable precisely because He is God’s Justice in person, who bursts through the gates, cries out in the streets, knowing he is giving Himself to the predators.