Who can snatch the plunder of war from the hands of a warrior?

    Who can demand that a tyrant^[d] let his captives go?

But the Lord says,

“The captives of warriors will be released,

    and the plunder of tyrants will be retrieved.

For I will fight those who fight you,

    and I will save your children.

I will feed your enemies with their own flesh.

    They will be drunk with rivers of their own blood.

All the world will know that I, the Lord,

    am [Yahweh Moshiekh] and your Redeemer,

    the Mighty One of Israel.^[e]”

Isaiah 49:24-26

Yahweh Moshiekh: The LORD Your Savior

“I will feed your enemies with their own flesh. They will be drunk with rivers of their own blood.” Well, that’s quite a vivid and violent picture, isn’t it?

Wasn’t I just saying in my last post that sometimes it can be hard to view God as El Tsaddik, the Righteous God? Wasn’t I just saying sometimes the brutality of this world is hard to reconcile with our own ideas of righteousness, with the kindness and love we believe of God?

Ah, so here we stand in one of those places, and we wonder how a good, righteous God could be so brutal.

But doesn’t He say why? “I will fight those who fight you. I will save your children.” Your children! Yahweh Moshiekh does not fight by His own desire or own His own behalf. He is not one of those souls who delight in the suffering of others. He does not destroy for pleasure. As a matter of fact, He destroys those who destroy for pleasure, those who would dare to destroy something as helpless as a child. And that is the difference. He is a Savior, not a psychopath.

He is Yahweh Moshiekh, who does not save halfway. When He rescues us, He does not let the evil escape to lurk behind another corner, to haunt us in our dreams, to terrorize us. The evil God destroys is utterly destroyed. Even if it is our own sin.