“They do neither evil nor corruption on my holy mountain, for the earth is filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” (Isaiah 11:9 Quinn-Miscall p. 47)
The deep peace of Isaiah 11:6-8 comes from deep knowledge. This is a knowledge deeper than appearances (v. 3-4) that extends through time. It is not knowledge of numbers or things, it is knowledge of the Lord, YHWH, the Great I AM who spoke to Moses from the burning bush and who led his people through the Red Sea on dry land. Since God is love (1 John 4:16), it is knowledge of love.
The knowledge that lasts includes mere cognition and acknowledgement, but it goes much further. The knowledge that counts is a relation-with, a dwelling-with, a making-with – a deep soul-level participation with the Other.
If knowledge was just data, we’d have no hope of knowing the God who is like a sphere with its circumference at infinity and its center everywhere (to quote Nicholas of Cusa). But this knowledge is our words meeting the Word, our minds meeting the original Mind, our souls meeting the One who breathed them into existence.
So Isaiah expands his scope yet again, and zooms out one more time till the Earth appears as a pale blue dot. We started with a mere seed on a stump in 11:1, which grew to a Shoot, then to a prophet/priest/king, then to a cross-species reconciliation, and now to a deep global ocean of knowledge.
This ocean is not like the digital oceans of data we have at our fingertips, which often feel like an overwhelming flood of distractions. That is a knowledge of shallow appearances. This ocean is more analog, because God reaches down and gives us “analogies” for us to know Him. Mind-blowing analogies, sure, but spirit-breathed words and images of revelation for those with eyes to see.
Knowledge might start with the mind perceiving a datum or hearing a word, but then it expands through time, working together with soul and body, in order to receive the truth that is bigger than we are. This full-person knowledge is another word for love. As the theologian Katherine Sonderegger says, “Our love of God is our delight and devotion in the Divine Immensity, Measureless, Bottomless, the Ocean of Reality.” (Syst. Theo., Vol 2 p. 313)
Sonderegger’s description of reality as an expansive ocean fits with Isaiah’s type of knowledge that fills like the waters cover the sea: “The real, I say, is a rich ocean, containing many kinds: not for me the ‘atoms and the void’ or even ‘natural kinds and natural laws’ only. No, the real is diverse, polymorphous, unimaginably fertile, and surprising. From an Infinitely Real and Fecund God pours forth such a torrent of realities, a rich cosmos, a feast.” (ST Vol 2 p. 202) Here Isaiah describes the torrent; in Isaiah 25:6 he describes the feast.
This is a peaceful ocean of knowledge, and Isaiah continues to describe the coming kingdom in these terms elsewhere. In Isaiah 32, first terms from Isaiah 11:3-4 and 9 are repeated: Eyes shall see and ears shall hear (32:3), and hearts shall gain knowledge (32:4). The result will be peace, here described in human terms: “the work of righteousness shall be peace” (32:17) and “my people shall dwell in a peaceable habitation.” This last mention of peace is the exact same word as used in the ancient blessing of Numbers 6:26, “the Lord lift up countenance upon you, and give you peace.”
It’s not just Isaiah. Three other minor prophets, and one major prophet, says knowing God is like swimming in a rich ocean:
- Isaiah’s line in 11:9 is so good another prophet uses it almost exactly. Habakkuk 2:14 says “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.” (NKJV) This same chapter speaks of how — in a context of violence, covetousness, and people who live by surface appearances and fleeting pleasures — “the just will live by faith” (2:4) and will wait for the Lord.
- Hosea 6:3 reads, “Let us know, let us pursue the knowledge of the LORD. His going forth is established as the morning; He will come to us like the rain, like the latter and former rain to the earth.” (NKJV) The rains that replenish the ocean are gifts, reminders of God’s faithfulness and mercy. The rains in June and December, in Belize and Seattle, are very different gifts that give in different ways at different times. We’re like dry land that waits to receive the water.
- Amos 5:24 reads, “But let justice run down like water, And righteousness like a mighty stream.” (NKJV) using the same word as Isaiah 11:9 for “like water.” Martin Luther King Jr. quoted this verse in the speech where he proclaimed “I have a dream.” King’s tomb in Atlanta sits on a long reflecting pool (shown in the photo). The water flows down from fountains over four steps that read “We will not be satisfied // Until justice rolls down like water // And righteousness // Like a mighty stream.” This is the hope for peace that knowing God brings, a hope that King still waits for.
- The most extensive image of the fountain of the knowledge of God is the New Temple described by Ezekiel, which becomes a fountain that flows down to water the earth. This is told as a story-vision in the first half of Ezekiel 47.
Ezekiel 47:1 starts on the top of the Temple Mount: “I saw water coming out from under the threshold of the temple toward the east.” The man with Ezekiel measured a quarter-mile down the stream and “led me through water that was -ankle-deep.” (3) Another quarter-mile east and he “led me through water that was knee-deep,” then again and the water “was up to the waist.” After about a full mile, “it was a river that I could not cross, because the water had risen and was deep enough to swim in—a river that no one could cross.” (5) Knowledge of God deepens more and more as you go along.
Then Ezekiel sees the river flow down to the lowest point on Earth, the Dead Sea: “When it empties into the sea, the salty water there becomes fresh. Swarms of living creatures will live wherever the river flows. There will be large numbers of fish, because this water flows there and makes the salt water fresh; so where the river flows everything will live.” (8b-9) The Dead Sea teems with fish again! This is like when Jesus filled the nets of his disciples with fish, and also like the peaceable kingdom earlier in Isaiah 11 now extended to the aquatic realm.
But Ezekiel’s not done yet, because the plants will be healed as well: “Fruit trees of all kinds will grow on both banks of the river. Their leaves will not wither, nor will their fruit fail. Every month they will bear fruit, because the water from the sanctuary flows to them. Their fruit will serve for food and their leaves for healing.” (10) The whole ecosystem is healed by these waters.
All five of these prophets’ words are like streams that converge, full with the revealed knowledge of Who God is. His Spirit flows like water from on high, covering the earth with deep justice, righteousness, and mercy, which means seeking out and transforming the deep parts of ourselves, including the parts are still unjust, not-right, and mean. This God plans to restore His whole creation, animals and humans, fruit trees and fish, all nations under the sun. He does this when deep calls out to deep, and we hear, and turn.
We could never touch the Infinite Three-in-One, who is farther away and brighter than the sun, no matter how high we build towers up to his brightness. But He descends to us, his light reflecting from each heart turned toward him, like the sun reflecting off the surface of deep waters.
Isaiah’s words reflect that light, as does each connection of selfless love. We can never touch the sun, but we can touch that reflection and sense for a moment what His love, His eternal fountain giving and receiving, is like.
(Photo taken at The King Center, August 24, 2021; the analogy of reflection is from N.T. Wright’s story “Shooting Arrows at the Sun,” p. 11 in The Resurrection of the Son of God, which also inspired the title of my old blog, “Arrow Through the Sun.”)
