Yesterday I tried a little experiment. As I was studying Isaiah I thought I would tweet through the first 12 chapters over the course of the day. Here are some reflections on tweeting through a book and then on the content of the book itself.

Reflections on Tweeting

I posted a new tweet every 5-10 minutes. I probably annoyed anyone who doesn’t follow many people on twitter since I would be the only person showing up all day. For those that follow a substantial number of people the tweets would have looked staggered (somewhat).

Tweeting through Isaiah 1–12 was helpful to me as I had to think about how to communicate the message of those chapters in so few characters. If I were to do it again I would have done more summary of the content interspersed with quotations from Isaiah.

Reflections on Isaiah 1–12

What a magnificent passage of Scripture! Scary, but magnificent. God’s judgment is cast in pretty strong language. The vineyard imagery of chapter 5 is one such example. Justice appears to be a major theme of the section as Judah is condemned for their lack of having justice on the oppressed.

But the passage is also filled with hope. We see that God’s judgment of Judah is not the last word. Yes they will go into exile as part of God’s judgment for their rebellion, but then God will turn and judge Assyria (conquerers of Judah).

Even more than this, there are beautiful moments of hope for the future. Chapter 4 shares the Branch of the Lord and tells of a time when the Lord will wash away the filth of the women of Zion and cleanse the bloodstains from Jerusalem. The end of chapter 8 and into chapter 9 speaks of a great light that is to shine in the darkness. It then talks of the child to be born, the son to be given. It gives him divine names like, “Mighty God,” and talks about him as the coming Davidic king who will rule forever. Chapter 11 talks about the coming Messiah again in terms of the shoot coming up out of the stump. Judah is leveled but a stump remains and out of this stump (read, remnant) the messiah will come who will have the Spirit of the Lord resting on him. Then it talks about how the nations will rally to him. There is no racism and no ethnic boundary! Chapter 12 concludes this section with wonderful praise to God and the call to proclaim his greatness to the nations.

With respect to the sign given to Ahaz in chapter 7, Immanuel (God With Us), I do see it as a judgment on Ahaz. Where it is picked up in Matthew 1 it is often seen without any sense of judgment. One writer has suggested Matthew uses Immanuel with the notion of judgment there too. It’s something I need to follow up on. I’m not sure yet.

Being more familiar with John’s Gospel, and the New Testament in general, I’m starting to see the thematic connections between Isaiah and those books much more intimately. I’m looking forward to tracing them out more fully!The above came more from my own study throughout the day rather than through the process of tweeting. But, the tweeting did help me solidify what I was learning by trying to decide how to present it on twitter and through the process of writing those things out. I think I will do something similar again but just not with so many tweets.