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LAIN and simple, we discover in this chapter that God
assigned a strange task to Isaiah. He had to remove his sackcloth garment and
his shoes in order to walk naked and barefoot. That would be bad enough, but he
had to do it for 3 years as a message against Ethiopia and Egypt. And, lest
anyone redefine Isaiah's assignment to mean something less than what it really
was, Isaiah 20:4 points out that their shame was in the fact that even their
buttocks would be bare as the Assyrians drove them from their own land. Of
course, the fact that Isaiah was already wearing mere sackcloth should indicate
that he didn't just remove his blue jeans while still wearing long johns. The
prophet of God literally embarrassed himself by baring his posterior in order
to get his message (or rather, God's message) across to his audience.
While the journey from northeast Africa would have begun in
shame as these majestic peoples were paraded out of their homelands without
proper coverings, it would surely have ended in pain because of their bare
feet. If the Assyrians made them march from anywhere near the Nile all the way
to Nineveh, they could have walked as much as 1000 miles, without shoes. No doubt they were a miserable sight indeed
by the time they passed through the holy land on their way further east. What a
warning their bitter journey would have been for the Jews who remained in
Canaan land! Remember that there were still Jews who survived in Jerusalem of
Judah until the invasion of the Babylonians over a century later. This message
of Isaiah was not just aimed at the Egyptians and Ethiopians, it was aimed at
those who were tempted to rely on those countries for help against the
Assyrians.
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