Moody Verbs
As I read
through Isaiah 62 – and no, I’m not going to talk about the first verse of this
chapter – I began to focus on something that I think as a culture we all take
for granted far too much. I’m talking
about the mood of the verb. Funny thing
... verbs have moods. LOL
Read through
these opening verses of Isaiah 62 and you will see a single word repeated time
and time again: “shall.” In English, we
would call this a conditional mood. Or,
if used with the word “if,” it could be the subjunctive mood. Why is this mood important? This mood expresses potentiality. It doesn’t express a present reality, but a
future reality that is yet to come. When
attached to a subjunctive the reality will come under certain conditions.
Of course,
our brains processes this and understands it almost instantaneously. We do it without thinking. If a parent says to a child, “If you clean
your room, we shall go out for ice cream,” then the child doesn’t sit down and
analyze the sentence and say, “Oh, the mood of the verbs used here is telling
me that there is a future reality and a condition to be met in order to bring
about that future reality.” No, the
brain of the child hears the words and immediately jumps to: “Must have ice
cream; must clean room first.” But
regardless of the work of the brain, you can see how the conditional mood is
used. It expresses a future possibility.
Let me bring
this all back to Isaiah 62. This passage
is chock full of conditional reality statements. “The nations shall see your
righteousness.” “You shall be called a
new name.” {Aside … hello? … Why have I never focused on that verse before? In the future reality you shall be called a
new name? God is doing a new thing! Wow.
Can’t believe I missed that before.
I digress…} “You shall be a
crown…” “You shall no more be
forsaken…” “You shall be called ‘My
Delight is in Her’ …” “Your land shall be married.” “So shall your sons marry you.” “So shall Your God rejoice over you.” “They shall never be silent.”
See what I
mean? This chapter is full of
conditional mood statements – and I stopped counting them in verse 6! But why is this important? Why are things like grammar, verb moods, and
understanding the difference between the conditional mood and the future tense
important? Keep in mind, I’m a former
math teacher. So former English teachers
… please forgive my untrained attempt at explaining, here.
The
conditional mood tells us that a future reality is possible, but it is not
present currently. The conditional mood
is used to speak about the hypothetical or the uncertain. The conditional mood is used to give us
something to look forward to while understanding that there is some uncertainty
about the future. Remember back to the
example about ice cream? The future
possible reality is eating ice cream.
But it is an uncertain reality because the child’s room is not yet
clean.
Isaiah 62 is
telling us the same kind of story. There
is a future potentiality for all of the things in this chapter to come
true. But what is the condition? The condition is the prior two chapters of
Isaiah. The prior two chapters have been
all about the coming of God’s Messiah.
When the Messiah comes, all of these conditional statements of reality
will happen. But the time was not right
in Isaiah’s day. The time was not even
right when they returned from Babylonian exile under the hand of the
Persians. The time was not right until
Jesus was born into a nation that would largely reject Him. The time was not right until this little baby
took the most humble of beginnings and came forth. That is the condition upon which these
conditional statements are attached.
This is what
I love about the importance of verses like Isaiah 62:10. Prepare the way for the people! Build up the highway! Isaiah knew that there would be work to be
done. There were hearts to prepare. God would meet the condition. The Messiah would be sent. But we need to be ready!
The sad
truth is that much of the Hebrew people were not ready. Some were.
Blessedly, some were! But many
rejected Jesus Christ. They rejected Him
as Messiah. They rejected His teachings as divine.
This is one
of the reasons why I return to my original point. It is important to understand this chapter in
the conditional that it is written. God
will meet the condition. God has sent
His Messiah to us. But we must be
ready. We must take the time to
prepare. We must take seriously our
calling to prepare the people for the coming of God’s Messiah into our
lives. God will meet His condition. It is up to us to make sure that we do not
miss out on the future reality that God is bringing forth in us.
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