Rethinking Suspicion : A Canonical-Agrarian Reading of Isaiah 65

Abstract

This essay addresses Isa 65 from a canonical-agrarian perspective, that is, with an eye for both the chapter's literary situation within the greater biblical book and its potential value for ecologically concerned "eaters" in the present day. Through language dealing with food production and consumption, chap. 65 extends a typology of hunger and satiety found earlier in the book in terms that are interdependently theological, ecological, and anthropological. This essay treats these three characteristics as irreducibly complex, an approach that differs from the ecological hermeneutic characteristic of the Earth Bible project, which seeks to isolate, identify with, and retrieve the text's ecological importance over against its anthropocentrism. This sort of approach tends to produce few text-based conclusions that better inform human behavior with respect to planet earth, precisely because human interests are prejudicially excised from the text's interpretation. By contrast, this essay concludes with three such practical proposals, each of which is tethered to a different aspect of the chapter's complex interest in food. The contemporary reader who would maintain a biblical hermeneutic of trust while also seeking to address humanity's growing ecological challenges may find this essay a valuable resource.