Part of my reading this morning was Isaiah 26 through 30.
What colorful language the prophet uses to describe sin and judgment.
One place that stood out to me was this.
It sounds funny but it is deadly serious.
He is saying that God is wise. The passage ends with this affirmation:
This also comes from the Lord of hosts;
he is wonderful in counsel
and excellent in wisdom.
And to prove that wisdom, Isaiah says, I want you to hear this:
God knows how to plant and harvest parsley.
Huh? Come again?
Read the whole thing.
Give ear, and hear my voice;
give attention, and hear my speech.
Does he who plows for sowing plow continually?
Does he continually open and harrow his ground?
When he has leveled its surface,
does he not scatter dill, sow cumin,
and put in wheat in rows
and barley in its proper place,
and emmer as the border?
For he is rightly instructed;
his God teaches him.
Dill is not threshed with a threshing sledge,
nor is a cart wheel rolled over cumin,
but dill is beaten out with a stick,
and cumin with a rod.
Does one crush grain for bread?
No, he does not thresh it forever;
when he drives his cart wheel over it
with his horses, he does not crush it.
This also comes from the Lord of hosts;
he is wonderful in counsel
and excellent in wisdom.
Essentially the argument being made is this.
Isaiah is warning God’s people who are sinning and “getting away with it.”
The warning is that the harvest is coming.
God is not a farmer who plants and then does nothing about it.
He doesn’t plant a seed, walk away and forget about it.
He doesn’t plant a seed and then, forgetting that it should be growing, accidentally roll over it with a cart.
God is the Lord over all and He makes no mistakes.
God is the Lord of the harvest.
He is coming.
Be ready.