{"id":1923,"date":"2012-07-12T06:49:00","date_gmt":"2012-07-12T10:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oldsandals.net\/?p=1923"},"modified":"2012-07-13T10:56:50","modified_gmt":"2012-07-13T14:56:50","slug":"isaiah-18-i-will-take-my-rest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/?p=1923","title":{"rendered":"(Isaiah 18) I will take my rest"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>All inhabitants of the world and dwellers on the earth: When He lifts up a banner on the mountains, you see\u00a0 it,\u00a0 and when He blows a trumpet, you hear\u00a0 it.\u00a0 For so the Lord said to me, &#8220;I will take My rest,\u00a0 and I will look from My dwelling place like clear heat in sunshine, like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest.\u00a0 For before the harvest, when the bud is perfect and the sour grape is ripening in the flower, [I, the LORD God,] will both cut off the sprigs with pruning hooks and take away\u00a0 and\u00a0 cut down the branches.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>In the days of Isaiah,\u00a0Ethiopia was a major world power, ruling Egypt and a chief rival to Assyria. Since Judah was caught in the middle between this conflict, it might make sense for Judah to align herself with Ethiopia against Assyria. But here the\u00a0LORD\u00a0God rejects the alliance with Ethiopia, because He is more than able to deal with the Assyrians Himself. He can\u00a0take His rest\u00a0without the help of the Ethiopians. If God wanted to muster an army against Assyria, He would have raised a banner or sounded a trumpet. He is fully able to do it, and would do it when the time is right.<\/p>\n<p>Interestingly, there is no rebuke or judgment against Ethiopia announced in this chapter. It wasn\u2019t as if God was going to judge Ethiopia for their offer of an alliance. Perhaps the idea is that it is a well-intentioned but unnecessary offer. Instead, Judah was to trust in the\u00a0LORD!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>All inhabitants of the world and dwellers on the earth: When He lifts up a banner on the mountains, you see\u00a0 it,\u00a0 and when He blows a trumpet, you hear\u00a0 it.\u00a0 For so the Lord said to me, &#8220;I will take My rest,\u00a0 and I will look from My dwelling place like clear heat in &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/?p=1923\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;(Isaiah 18) I will take my rest&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1923"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1923"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1927,"href":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1923\/revisions\/1927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}