Isaiah 9:2 – Hope for Those in the “Deep Darkness”
Contained within the traditional Christmas Nine Lessons and Carols service is a familiar reading from Isaiah 9:2 which mentions a curious phrase, “those who lived in a land of deep darkness”:
The people who walked in darkness
Isaiah 9:2,6-7 (NRSVUE)
have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness—
on them light has shined.
For a child has been born for us,
a son given to us;
authority rests upon his shoulders,
and he is named
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace….
Great will be his authority,
and there shall be endless peace
for the throne of David and his kingdom.
He will establish and uphold it
with justice and with righteousness
from this time onward and forevermore.
The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.
What is the “land of deep darkness” that Isaiah speaks of? Is it deep depression? Is it very “heathen” lands far from the Hebraic ideals of Isaiah? Or is there something more terrifyingly beautiful hidden in those words, a more encompassing message of good news, buried like a great treasure in a field, awaiting those who would search the loamy earth for it?
Knowledge of the Hebrew term for “deep darkness,” more literally “death shadow” – tsalmaveth, and the deeper contextual meaning reveals that it’s speaking of the land of the afterlife, Sheol as the Hebrews understood it, or Hades as the Greek-speaking Septuagint translators and New Testament writers called it.
We’ve previously discussed the word tsalmaveth and its usage for the afterlife in this article. It is used in the great Psalm 23:4, and translated as the “shadow of death” by certain English translations. It’s used by Job to speak of the land to which he would go and never return—Job 10:21-22; 16:16; 38:17 (the Hebraic afterlife understanding at that time didn’t have the concept of bodily resurrection). Psalm 107:10, 14 also speaks of these chthonic, liminal spaces using this term.
Not only did Christ come to bring good news to the physically alive (“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light”), but also to those in Sheol. Isaiah’s prophetic good news of the birth of the Messiah claimed his arrival would shine a light not only upon the embodied but also the disembodied in the deep darkness of Sheol, later known as Hades itself!
As St John of Damascus states:
The soul when it was deified descended into Hades, in order that, just as the Sun of Righteousness rose for those upon the earth, so likewise He might bring light to those who sit under the earth in darkness and shadow of death: in order that just as He brought the message of peace to those upon the earth, and of release to the prisoners, and of sight to the blind, and became to those who believed the Author of everlasting salvation and to those who did not believe a reproach of their unbelief, so He might become the same to those in Hades: that every knee should bow to Him, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth. And thus, after He had freed those who had been bound for ages, straightway He rose again from the dead, showing us the way of resurrection.
The Orthodox Faith, III, 29
There was no place where salvation would not be possible with the arrival and work of Jesus Christ, both in his life, and in the intermediate afterlife (where he would preach the good news of reconciliation with God through him—see 1 Peter 3:18-4:6 and this article on the Harrowing of Hades), and in the resurrection and ascension of him to fill all things with himself (Ephesians 4:8-10).
No wonder the forces of darkness would try to destroy that light coming into the world in an attempt to keep humanity captive. But the gates of Hades would not withstand his assault to bring light upon those trapped there, gaining authority over that realm by taking the keys of death and Hades (Revelation 1:18) so that all may be set free from the sting of death, should they wish.
When you next hear these words in the Nine Lessons and Carols, or during your Christmas services, ponder upon the full immensity of the mission of God, “contracted to a span, incomprehensibly made man”.
May the light of God shine upon you this Christmas time.
