The beginning of Handel’s Messiah takes its cue from the 40th chapter of Isaiah, and the “voice crying in the desert” Matthew later identified as John the Baptizer (see here for a table of parallels).
The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness,
“Prepare ye the way of the LORD,
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be exalted,
and every mountain and hill shall be made low:
and the crooked shall be made straight,
and the rough places plain:
And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed,
and all flesh shall see it together:
for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it.
Several other Messianic prophecies are familiar from this chapter, especially in vs. 11, 41:10, and then again in 41:25, where we derive the name for our blog. I love how these segue into the next chapter.
In the footnotes of my edition, chs. 40-55 are called the ”Book of the Consolation of Israel“, because the people of Israel are again to be blessed with a visible sign of the presence of the Lord. For us, we recognise the Emmanuel, God-with-us.
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3 comments:
Sorry to have disappeared. I have now returned from the black hole known as Pace. I can start writing again ASAP. I just didn't have any time while I was at home, and I was never on the internet. Sorry yall :( Hope you had a good Christmas, though.
I think we all disappeared:) But it has been a busy holiday, and we knew it would be. Don't apologise, tho; you're perfectly in line. We don't need to be . . . you know . . . German about the whole thing. I am in Napoli, for one thing. V. difficult to act in an orderly fashion here.
Was your Christmas alright?
Lol. Germaness keeps coming out in me a lot lately. It's disturbing. I'm sure it will pass though as soon as the semester starts and Germaness begins to be useful.
My Christmas was very good. I made a gingerbread house with my little sisters. It had very fat gingerbread fathead people glued to it. Lenin got to chase other dogs and mark various vertically inclined objects. My only complaint is that I didn't get to go to church.
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