If You Will Not Believe

We tend to treat belief like an opinion. Something we hold, keep on file, and carry in a back pocket in case it comes up. Isaiah hands King Ahaz a very different picture. Believe, or you will not stand. Faith is the ground under a man’s feet, and a king who will not trust God has nothing solid beneath him.

Tomorrow’s readings set two kinds of unbelief side by side. A king with a prophet at his elbow, and three towns with the Messiah walking their streets. Both were handed grace at arm’s length. Both let it slip through their fingers. And on the very same day, the Church remembers a young Mohawk woman who had almost nothing handed to her, believed anyway, and stood: Saint Kateri Tekakwitha. So here is the question worth sitting with before Mass. When God draws that close, what do we do with it?

The Readings

First Reading: Isaiah 7:1–9

In the days of Ahaz the son of Jotham, son of Uzziah, king of Judah, Rezin the king of Syria and Pekah the son of Remaliah the king of Israel came up to Jerusalem to wage war against it, but they could not conquer it. When the house of David was told, “Syria is in league with Ephraim,” his heart and the heart of his people shook as the trees of the forest shake before the wind.

And the Lord said to Isaiah, “Go forth to meet Ahaz, you and Shear-jashub your son, at the end of the conduit of the upper pool on the highway to the Fuller’s Field, and say to him, ’Take heed, be quiet, do not fear, and do not let your heart be faint because of these two smoldering stumps of firebrands, at the fierce anger of Rezin and Syria and the son of Remaliah. Because Syria, with Ephraim and the son of Remaliah, has devised evil against you, saying, ”Let us go up against Judah and terrify it, and let us conquer it for ourselves, and set up the son of Tabeel as king in the midst of it,” thus says the Lord God:

It shall not stand, and it shall not come to pass. For the head of Syria is Damascus, and the head of Damascus is Rezin. (Within sixty-five years Ephraim will be broken to pieces so that it will no longer be a people.) And the head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria is the son of Remaliah. If you will not believe, surely you shall not be established.’”

Gospel: Matthew 11:20–24

Then he began to upbraid the cities where most of his mighty works had been done, because they did not repent. “Woe to you, Chorazin! woe to you, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, it shall be more tolerable on the day of judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you. And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You shall be brought down to Hades. For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I tell you that it shall be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom than for you.”

Scriptural Analysis

Start with the map, because the map is the whole point. It is around 734 BC. Rezin of Syria, whose capital is Damascus, and Pekah of Israel, the northern kingdom Isaiah keeps calling Ephraim, whose capital is Samaria, have formed a coalition against the rising power of Assyria. They want Judah to join. Ahaz refuses, so they march on Jerusalem to force his hand, and their plan is to throw the son of David off the throne and install a puppet, “the son of Tabeel” (Isaiah 7:6). This is a war to end the line of David. And Ahaz knows it.

His reaction is fear. His heart and his people’s hearts “shook as the trees of the forest shake before the wind” (Isaiah 7:2). Aquinas, in his commentary on Isaiah, sets this trembling of the king beside another troubled king, Herod, who heard that a child had been born in Bethlehem and was shaken along with all Jerusalem (Matthew 2:3).¹ Fear of losing a throne makes men do reckless things.

Notice where Isaiah is told to find him. “At the end of the conduit of the upper pool, on the highway to the Fuller’s Field” (Isaiah 7:3). Aquinas explains that Jerusalem sits in the hills and has no rivers, so the city depended on pools fed by rain and aqueducts.² Ahaz is out inspecting the water supply, getting ready for a siege. He is doing the sensible thing, the logistical thing. He is counting his water. What he is not doing is trusting God. And that is the setting into which the prophet speaks.

God’s word to him is almost tender. Take heed, be quiet, do not fear (Isaiah 7:4). Then look at how the Lord describes the terrifying coalition: “two smoldering stumps of firebrands.” Burnt-out torches. Aquinas points out the vanity of these two kings, who threaten great things while their kingdoms are already guttering out.³ History proved it. Rezin would soon be killed and Damascus destroyed, and within sixty-five years the northern kingdom would be carried off and cease to be a people. The thing Ahaz is shaking over is a pair of dying embers. God says plainly, “It shall not stand, and it shall not come to pass” (Isaiah 7:7).

Then the hinge of the whole passage. “If you will not believe, surely you shall not be established” (Isaiah 7:9). In Hebrew this is a play on a single root, the root behind our word amen. To believe and to be made firm are the same word wearing two faces. Faith is not an add-on to Ahaz’s security plan. Faith is the security. Refuse it, and you are a man with no floor. The Navarre commentary reads the whole scene this way: Judah’s temptation is to trust a political alliance instead of the Lord, and the prophet warns that safety was never going to come from Damascus, or Samaria, or Assyria.⁴ Ahaz made his choice. He did not believe, and he sent silver and gold to Tiglath-pileser of Assyria to buy protection, which cost him dearly and helped him not at all (2 Chronicles 28:21).

One more thing sits quietly in this reading. Isaiah brings his son along, Shear-jashub, and the boy’s name means “a remnant shall return.” God builds a promise into a child and sets him in front of the frightened king as a walking sign that his people will survive.⁴ Hold that thought, because the very next verses, the ones the Church saves for later, give Ahaz the sign of Immanuel, God-with-us, born of a virgin (Isaiah 7:14). Ahaz’s fear is the doorway to the first great messianic promise. Even a faithless king cannot stop God from giving the sign.

Now walk east to the Sea of Galilee and the towns in the Gospel. Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum sit within a couple hours’ walk of one another on the northern shore, the everyday range of Jesus’ ministry.⁵ These are not strangers to him. They watched him heal, cast out demons, feed crowds, raise the dead. And they did not repent. So Jesus takes up the old prophetic word of judgment, “Woe to you,” the same word Isaiah and Micah and Habakkuk used against the guilty (see Isaiah 5, Micah 2). He is speaking as a prophet, and worse, as the one the prophets pointed toward.

The comparison he draws would have stunned his hearers. Tyre and Sidon were pagan Phoenician cities on the coast, and the Old Testament already had them under judgment (Isaiah 23, Ezekiel 26 through 28). To a devout Galilean they were bywords for Gentile corruption. Jesus says those cities would have repented in sackcloth and ashes if they had seen what Chorazin and Bethsaida saw, and so they will fare better on the day of judgment. Then he turns to Capernaum, the town he had made his own home (Matthew 4:13), and quotes Isaiah’s taunt against the proud king of Babylon: will you be exalted to heaven? You will be brought down to Hades (Isaiah 14:13–15). The fishing village that hosted the Messiah gets measured against Babylon and Sodom, and comes up shorter than both.

There is a deliberate craft to how Jesus says all this. He addresses the towns directly, by name, as if they were people standing in front of him. That is the prophets’ technique. Isaiah personified Tyre and Sidon and spoke to them face to face, and Ezekiel put the fall of Tyre in the mouth of its own proud prince. Harrington notes that Jesus borrows these forms straight from the prophets, and then does something jarring with them: he aims the language of judgment usually reserved for Israel’s pagan enemies at Jewish towns that had every advantage.⁶ The point of the personification is that a city, like a soul, is answerable. It can be spoken to. It can be called to account.

Why so severe? Aquinas, commenting on Matthew, says the reproach is measured against the benefit received. The Lord had done these towns an enormous good simply by being present among them, and their indifference to that good is what draws the woe. He notes that Bethsaida means “house of fruits,” a place from which much fruit was rightly expected, and where none came.⁷ Jesus does not condemn them for some fresh crime. He condemns them for seeing everything and changing nothing. Curtis Mitch and Edward Sri put the lesson in one line: “with great privilege comes great responsibility.”⁸ The guilt runs exactly as deep as the grace. And as Daniel Harrington observes, the passage is a warning to God’s own people not to lean on their spiritual privileges as though proximity were the same as repentance.⁶

Set the two readings against each other and they rhyme. Ahaz trembled before a threat that was already burning out, because he would not believe. The Galilean towns yawned at the Messiah in their streets, because they would not repent. Both had God within reach. Both refused to be established on him. Capernaum, exalted by his presence, gets dragged down to Hades, which is just Isaiah 7:9 played out on a larger stage. If you will not believe, you will not stand.

Daily Application

Here is the mercy hiding in tomorrow’s saint. By every earthly measure, Kateri Tekakwitha should have been an Ahaz. Smallpox took her parents and her baby brother when she was four and left her scarred and half-blind. Her own uncle, the chief who raised her, hated the missionaries. When she was baptized at nineteen she was treated as a slave, denied food on Sundays because she would not work. She finally fled two hundred miles on foot to live her faith in peace. She was handed less than Ahaz, less than Capernaum, less than almost anyone in either reading. And she believed. She was established. The Church canonized her in 2012, and today she is the patroness of Indigenous Americans.

So the problem was never privilege. The problem is wasted privilege. And if we are honest, we are not the persecuted convert in this story. We are Capernaum. The Eucharist is a few blocks away, offered every single morning. The Scriptures are on the phone in our pocket. Absolution is available for the asking, most weeks by simply showing up. We have the mighty works on tap, and familiarity has done to us exactly what it did to those towns. We can witness grace daily and stay completely unmoved.

The temptation, when we feel that numbness, is to do what Ahaz did. Manage it ourselves. Call Assyria for backup. Keep the faith on file as an opinion while we build our real security out of money, reputation, or a plan we can control. Isaiah’s word cuts straight through that. Those alliances are smoldering stumps. They cannot hold you up.

So make it concrete this week. Name the grace you have grown numb to, the one you walk past without a second look, and go back to it on purpose. Get to a daily Mass, even one, and pay attention as if it were the first. Make the confession you have been putting off. Take the thing you have been white-knuckling by your own strength and actually hand it to God, out loud, in prayer. Kateri had a scarred face, a hostile family, and a two-hundred-mile walk, and she found her footing on Christ. We have been given so much more. Believe, and be established.

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Notes

1. ↑ Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Isaiah, chap. 7, lect. 1, no. 237.
2. ↑ Aquinas, Commentary on Isaiah, chap. 7, lect. 1, no. 238.
3. ↑ Aquinas, Commentary on Isaiah, chap. 7, lect. 1, no. 240.
4. ↑ The Navarre Bible: Major Prophets, note on Isaiah 7:1–9 (Dublin: Four Courts Press).
5. ↑ Curtis Mitch and Edward Sri, The Gospel of Matthew, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2010), 157.
6. ↑ Daniel J. Harrington, The Gospel of Matthew, Sacra Pagina (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1991), 165.
7. ↑ Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Matthew, chap. 11, lect. 3, nos. 943, 947.
8. ↑ Mitch and Sri, Gospel of Matthew, 158.

Books Cited

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• Curtis Mitch and Edward Sri, The Gospel of Matthew, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture (Baker Academic, 2010)
• Daniel J. Harrington, SJ, The Gospel of Matthew, Sacra Pagina 1 (Liturgical Press)
• St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Isaiah, Latin-English Opera Omnia vol. 30 (Emmaus Academic)
• University of Navarre, The Navarre Bible: Major Prophets, Four Courts Press, 2005
• St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew 1-12, Latin-English Opera Omnia (Emmaus Academic)