A voice proclaims:In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD!
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) December 10, 2019
Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God! Every valley shall be lifted up,every mountain and hill made low;The rugged land shall be a plain,the rough country, a broad valley.
Isaiah 40: 3-4
Is this about that volcano in New Zealand? The impeachment? Something I haven't noticed yet? Some bad dreams? Tell me, Marco!
ADDED: Is he just getting ready for Christmas?
OR: Is this about the Senate prepping for the impeachment trial? Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God... their god being Trump, the wasteland being Congress, and the highway being an appropriate set of procedures for conducting the trial?
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101 comments:
Maybe he was listening to Godspell in his sleep.
Musings from his tub after a bottle of wine...or he’s upset the baby Yoda show was snubbed.
It's Advent. Yesterday was the day in the liturgical calendar for readings about John the Baptist. Sometimes a cigar is only a cigar.
The volcano event in NZ is a bad one. Info still coming out.
@Jamie
I present that option in the post.
It's kind of a screwy way for a Senator to speak to the nation about the national holiday. And this idea of flattening the landscape.... I'd rather not hear that from a govt official.
Yes, as an "added," you do present the possibility that he's just getting ready for Christmas. But the season of Advent, a contemplative season of preparation of one's soul for the coming of the Christ, is not exactly the same as "getting ready for Christmas" in the sense that most of your readers will probably take it. And, knowing that that passage is part of the John the Baptist arc and yesterday was, so to speak, John the Baptist day might add some useful color.
I do apologize for the cranky tone. Advent is special to me, separate from Christmas.
He does a quote from the Bible often.
“... flattening the landscape...”
Of course it isn’t landscape that Isaiah is taking about. It’s people. The humble, poor, and lowly will be exalted. The high and noble in the worldly way of judging will be made low.
He's channeling his inner Comey.
Our Professor Althouse claims I present that option in the post.
A) look like you ADDED that option in your post.
B) IF you were a Christian, you'd know that Advent and "getting ready for Christmas" aren't Synonyms
Althouse is post-Christian.
"All the churches are empty and the mosques are full."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postchristianity
I'd rather not hear that from a govt official.
If you didn’t like that, the Psalm for the 2nd Sunday in Advent will really make your hair stand on end.
Psalm 72
A Prayer for the Guidance and Support of the King
Give the king your justice, O God,
and your righteousness to a king’s son.
May he judge your people with righteousness,
and your poor with justice.
May the mountains yield prosperity for the people,
and the hills, in righteousness.
May he defend the cause of the poor of the people,
give deliverance to the needy,
and crush the oppressor.
It just gets better from there...
And I’m sure later this month Sen. Rubio will tweet something to the effect of “And unto us a child is born...”
Pretty radical stuff.
it isn't "screwy," it's traditional. It's one of the Advent readings for this week. Millions and millions of Americans sit with their family around a wreath of advent candles and read it. They do that four times on the four Sundays before Christmas.
You sound really defensive about being caught out demonstrating ignorance.
Remember, Twitter is just a new high tech gossip tool. Nothing more.
JOhn the Baptist reference - that was the Gospel reading for this Sunday in a lot of churches.
Is Rubio Catholic? We'll see how the press handles his references compared to how they handle Pelosi's.
Video of his foam boy days about to be released?
@Jamie
Advent = getting read for Christmas.
Which is exactly what I said.
I think the Old Testament quote is awfully harsh in relation to New Testament ideas. What's with flattening the landscape? It should be about preparing yourself, inside.
People already beat me to it.
At our church the past two weekends, the focus has been on Zechariah and Elizabeth (the parents of John the Baptist), and then Mary and Joseph.
As others have pointed out, the "land" in the Isaiah passage is adopted by the New Testament to speak metaphorically of the human heart. Humility and repentance precedes the entrance of the Messiah.
This doesn't take away from Rubio being an overrated hack.
"A) look like you ADDED that option in your post. "
Yes, but I added it immediately, not in response to commenters bringing it up. I understood the quote all along, but I was concerned that anyone might think I did not understand the Biblical quote (despite my tags), and I was right.
I don't want to argue about the depth of anyone's feelings about Christmas. I just thought Rubio looked wacky dropping that quote without context.
@Ann,
"What's with flattening the landscape? It should be about preparing yourself, inside."
God is flattening the landscape of the human heart. There's no contradiction. We prepare ourselves by allowing Him to work in our hearts. Every "mountain" (place of pride) is brought low.
Have you never heard Handel's Messiah? "Every valley shall be exalted."
https://youtu.be/7NCO6UzZ2R8
Now I'm going to belabor the point a bit: "getting ready for Christmas" is treated as *part* of Advent, but it isn't the same thing. Advent is a season of penitence and joyful preparation for the *next* time God in Christ comes to us, and a time to consider whether our lamps are trimmed and we have enough oil for the Wedding.
And we're almost halfway through it, which means Rubio's quote wasn't out of context.
Bible verses are not new to Rubio’s twitter feed. Rubio would not confuse Trump with God, that’s silly. The line “Every valley shall be lifted up,every mountain and hill made low” has echos of “the last shall be first and the first shall be last.”
So it's OK for someone who is a Catholic when it's convenient, like Pelosi, to profess her occasional faith in public, but someone who is Catholic even when it's not convenient is wacky when he does it?
To be specific, that passage from Isaiah 40 is the lectionary text from the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL) for the second Sunday of Advent (which was last Sunday) but for Year B. We just began Year A. But many churches don't follow the RCL, closely or even at all, especially delineating between Years A, B, and C. (If you'd like more info on the lectionary, I recommend Vanderbilt Library's online resource.)
He wasn't pulling something out of thin air- he was right on time for the 2nd Sunday of Advent.
Isaiah 40:3-5: A description of the return of the exiles from Babylon to Jerusalem (Zion). The language used here figuratively describes the way the exiles will take. The Lord leads them, so their way lies straight across the wilderness rather than along the well-watered routes usually followed from Mesopotamia to Israel.
Not sure how it fits in with todays narratives, but it's from his head and heart and I'm sure it speaks to those who's head and heart are in that same place. Why it should piss anyone off is more of a sign of their own issues, I think.
This is a really famous passage, always associated with Advent. It's prominent in Handel's Messiah. (Which you should listen to. It's extraordinary. And I primarily mean everything other than the Hallelujah Chorus, which is overused.).
Essentially any Christian knows exactly why he's posting it and because it's so obvious to those of us in this context, I can see why it wouldn't occur to him that it would be seen as anything else.
Having some experience of an actively Christian household, I'm thinking " he [is] just getting ready for Christmas".
On the other hand, he is a politician, so perhaps I should embrace the power of "and".
Lead in to an infrastructure rant.
Rubio is quoting from the first reading in today's liturgy in the Roman Catholic rite.
AA: "I'd rather not hear that from a govt official."
"...endowed by their creator..."
"...that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom ..."
Well, you get the idea.
AA: I think the Old Testament quote is awfully harsh in relation to New Testament ideas. What's with flattening the landscape? It should be about preparing yourself, inside.
Althouse is at her funniest when she's running around telling Christians not of the Western late-modern post-Christianity persuasion that they're doing their Christianity all wrong. Seems pretty straightforward thing for a Catholic (as I assume Rubio is) to put up at this time of year.
Sorry if Isaiah harshes your mellow, but (as others have tried to point out) those passages are part of the traditional liturgical cycle. Always there in Advent. Not chosen by the local pastor or congregation.
I always have this vision of Althouse, righteous middle-class liberal American post-Christian, running into, say, a Mexican cathedral, or a Tridentine Mass, or an Orthodox service, or any of the myriad traditional services held among the actual believers of a millenia-old faith with billions of adherents through time, shouting "Stop! This isn't what Christianity is all about! You're doing this all wrong!".
"I think the Old Testament quote is awfully harsh in relation to New Testament ideas. What's with flattening the landscape? It should be about preparing yourself, inside."
I am not a biblical scholar, but I believe the passage that Rubio quoted is often interpreted as a call to personal repentance during advent in preparation for the coming of Christ.
I think the Old Testament quote is awfully harsh in relation to New Testament ideas.
Lots of Old Testament quotes are. Theologians then harmonize them with contemporary ideas. It's a lot like law that way. Michael Grant called St. Paul the world's greatest lawyer: he took a bunch of precedents that seemed to say one thing (e.g., that the Messiah would be a military leader) and re-interpreted them into something very different--but which was intellectually coherent, and which millions of people found persuasive.
Thank goodness Handel used the KJV.
Comfort Ye and Ev'ry Valley
The Catholic religion, as also most cases of Christian religion, as Brother Victor pointed out, is not just personal but collective, not just spiritual but physical, as in it is relevant across that reality of space and time in which we are less than dust.
The Bible is full of grim warnings of actual disasters.
Last night I attended an Advent Taize service hosted by the Sinsinawa Dominicans in their lovely complex down by Dubuque and Galena (but still in Wisconsin).
Marco Rubio's quote was part of the reading in the service and, this being the Sinsinawa Dominicans, it was followed by what was a beautiful reflection by a woman poet on roads, the tearing up of roads, and the rebuilding of roads.
The best part of it was the poet's description of John the Baptist, reminding us that he was smelly and unkempt, looked crazy and had honey dripping out of his mouth, and that he was the one however inexplicably sent to announce the coming of the new dispensation.
It's of the today's readings at Mass in the Catholic Church. Rubio does this frequently. And frequently gets this reaction.
Looking thru his strange twitterings, this garnered itself:
TikTok’s owner is helping China’s campaign of repression in Xinjiang, report finds
Chinese tech giants including ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, and Huawei Technologies are working closely with the Communist Party to censor and surveil Uighur Muslims in China’s western region of Xinjiang, according to a new report published Thursday.
++
But the story is in the Whappo, so it's probably mostly false.
Old testament prophecy about the Messiah.
Only democrats are allowed to be Christians.
...well... Fake Christians, like Pelosi. The fraud, fake phony false god who gets a sanding ovation from other progressives a the church of the progressive.
The modern democrat party could not care less about Chinese oppression.
Just to pile on: really, if you are going to comment on Christianity and Catholicism, please try to show some humility in your ignorance (just because someone grew up "Christian" doesn't mean much). Also, the secular world around us in the States does not participate at all in "getting ready for Christmas". The culture no longer even celebrates Christmas, just the vacuity of the the "holiday shopping season" and the vices associated with decadence of "Mit Schlag". I look forward to the days when all of the holiday shopping season carols blaring in the stores and the holiday shopping season events no longer mention Christmas at all. At least people will not confuse Advent and Christmas with their trips to the malls or their online shopping.
The quote is obviously an RFP for a highway construction project.
I sometimes listen to the all-Christmas FM local radio station. Kozi 1 oh 1.
Between Jingle Bell Rock and Santa is coming to town, they actually do play a fair amount of Christian based songs. Like Celine Dion's O Night and Kelly Clarkson Silent Night and some such. I often wonder how long it will take the progressive left to figure this out and have those songs banned.
Althouse posting on the Bible or Christianity = Me posting on spy novels or molecular biology.
“Althouse is at her funniest when she's running around telling Christians not of the Western late-modern post-Christianity persuasion that they're doing their Christianity all wrong.”
She does that quite a bit. Needs an Althouse in Jesusland tag.
It's a great idea for Catholics during Advent to take extreme offense at non-Catholics and to call them out and rebuke them in a harsh and mocking way.
I'm the pastor of a Protestant church, and we also read this passage in church Sunday as part of our Advent celebration.
"What's Up With Ann?"
sorry to say, our host's take is 'screwy', vs Rubio's timely, appropriate bible quote
The list of possibilities re what's up with Marco is screwy or trolling
Rubio's Twitter feed filled with Bible texts for years. Sets him apart i guess.
Rubio is always tweeting scripture.
Playing to his base I guess. I unfollowed.
Thou shalt only worship at the church of the progressive. Thou shalt have no other gods before the church of the progressive. You must buy Adam Schitt's lies, for they are like holy water to the collective.
The Old Testament is much more apocalyptic and interesting. The reinterpretations of it to fit later views are dull.
Handel does it this way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIkMIw1wz7A
Making ways straight no longer seems acceptable.
But the sine qua non of miracles is the teen girl Mary accepting the announced incarnation of God in a man. It all depended on her faith. Leave that one out and Easter don’t mean anything.
How did Advent come to be?
It is clearly a-historical to the event it anticipates?
Leslie Graves: It's a great idea for Catholics during Advent to take extreme offense at non-Catholics and to call them out and rebuke them in a harsh and mocking way.
"Extreme offense". "Harsh."
Lol. The mockery looks pretty restrained and good-natured to me. (What I *really* wanted to post was "Where's the Spanish Inquisition when you need it?".)
Mozart re-orchestrated Händel to be performed in German. Der Messias It makes an interesting Mozart-Händel hybrid.
Just wait until he tweets, "And He shall purify"
"I think the Old Testament quote is awfully harsh in relation to New Testament ideas. What's with flattening the landscape? It should be about preparing yourself, inside."
Thank you for telling everyone what Christianity should be about.
Go back to blogging about things you might know.
...or "and we like sheep have gone astray"
@Althouse, "getting ready for Christmas" means exchanging Christmas lists, buying (and hiding) presents, buying gift wrap, bringing the Balsam Hill garlands up from the basement and draping them on the stair rails, stringing lights around the porch, buying a tree after promising yourself last year that this year you would get artificial, etc.
But to a devout Christian there is another meaning that is not captured in your blithe "getting ready for Christmas." I doubt you meant to be offensive, but offense given thoughtlessly is still offense.
An atheist should not be explaining this to you.
Well quite simply this is how he can foster connections with his low IQ base of support.
I'm always OK being mocked by Catholics here, like being called 'heretic', etc. And I often mock them for some of their beliefs and practices. But, at heart, we share an understanding of the Gospel and a common Savior.
But the sine qua non of miracles is the teen girl Mary accepting the announced incarnation of God in a man. It all depended on her faith.
OMG! Tradguy has gone over to the scarlet woman!
He was talking in his sleep about the airstrip and hangar his budget director built for his personal aircraft using state community college funds back when he was the crooked little pepito of the Florida House -- even before FIU doubled its tax take after giving Rubio a no-show job. Marco! oughta be in prison with the rest of his inner circle, but Al Cardenas and Charles Koch saved his wooden tush for bigger rackets.
(eaglebeak)
Every other commenter probably said this too, but this is part of the liturgy for the Season of Advent, in which we find ourselves. It is used in Handel's Messiah.
P.S. Epstein didn't kill himself.
P.P.S. Democratic Party a disgrace to the nation.
The Old Testament is much more apocalyptic and interesting.
Much like the early issues of The Adventures of God-Man
"I believe[sic] Japan doesn't yet understand Christmas"
You really ought not take the conversation off topic, and hit on ann's commenters. It makes your kind look bad.
Am I missing out, shayna? Should I be hitting on you? I do love me some ginger...must want/be of age to drop a few kids tho.
Don't worry bout Howie Gonzales, he can always get a few of his buddies together to rape a 13yo Flip or Nip or Oki LBFM (Howie, you wanna splain to us how that works with you he-men? What's that about?) and get his ya-yas out.
Instead of piling on about today's lectionary readings, I'll just link some fitting 1970s Messianic Jewish pop. You're welcome!
“ @Althouse, "getting ready for Christmas" means exchanging Christmas lists, buying (and hiding) presents, buying gift wrap, bringing the Balsam Hill garlands up from the basement and draping them on the stair rails, stringing lights around the porch, buying a tree after promising yourself last year that this year you would get artificial, etc. But to a devout Christian there is another meaning that is not captured in your blithe "getting ready for Christmas." I doubt you meant to be offensive, but offense given thoughtlessly is still offense.”
You misread my mind.
Verse three of Isaiah 40 is referenced all the gospels of the New Testement. In particular, it is described as personified in John the Baptist.
What is Rubio doing? It is Christmas season, that is why Rubio put out the tweet.
It's the Mass reading for today. I would suspect Rubio went to Mass this morning (yes, some Catholics go to Mass during the week, and some Catholics in Advent make special efforts to do so). It's the beginning of the book of consolation, and it's about the return of the exiles in Babylon to the Promised Land. The road in the wilderness is the road taking them from exile to their home, and all the flattening and so forth is about that particular engineering project. It's about God being faithful to his promises, and saving his people. Which is what we celebrate at Christmas.
While I can't read Rubio's mind, I suppose he is encouraging people to pick up their bibles and read about it, as is his right as a citizen of a country with freedom of religion.
I once considered moving to Whakatane, site of White Island, until a local told me evacuation time in the event of a big blow was projected at 8 minutes. No thanks.
As for Marco: He’s just offering up a cautionary admonition from The Lord through Isaiah for the Advent season.
In this day of the Democrats, we could use a “straight highway for our God,” rather than the crooked path taken by The Evil Party.
Nichevo: what is it about you people and you're obsession with rape and gay sex fantasy. Freud might say it because momma took you off the tit late and daddy was always cross and occasionally violent.
It seems odd to read harshness into the Scriptural opening to the Consolation of Israel. In a literal sense it’s the story of the return of the Israelites from captivity in Babylon, and figuratively it actually is the foretelling of the new Covenant that is detailed in the New Testament.
Angle-Dyne, Samurai Buzzard said...
Althouse is at her funniest when she's running around telling Christians not of the Western late-modern post-Christianity persuasion that they're doing their Christianity all wrong. Seems pretty straightforward thing for a Catholic (as I assume Rubio is) to put up at this time of year.
Hopefully Ann will have managed to remove her foot from her mouth in time for tomorrow's dawn run.
You misread my mind.
About what? That you didn't actually mean to give offense?
Well, that is one bit of Bible text that shows up in Handel's "Messiah".
It's from the Catholic Church's readings for Tuesday of the Second Week of Advent. If he went to mass this morning he would have heard it read. If he reads the daily readings he would have read it today.
See http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/121019.cfm
yes they want Caesar to have the authority of god, it's a much more worthy statement, than the current round of pronouncements,
the puritans had a very old testament view of things, but within three generation, the new canaan had backslid into despair as in judges, that's why cotton mather came into the picture,
Clearly, Rubio will have to recuse himself in the Senate impeachment trial.
Blogger Howard said...
“Well quite simply this is how he can foster connections with his low IQ base of support.”
Oh, Howard, the day you can pass that nonsense off is long gone. The party that is relying on uneducated immigrants, illegal and other, to create majorities; the party that sold the Russia hoax to its rank and file; the party for whom “bribery doesn’t mean what they think it means;” the party for whom Joe Biden is front runner and HillBilly the Grifter is polling as a leading contender; the party pushing the economy destroying Green New Deal; etc., that party has perhaps the most ignorant base in American history, comparably speaking.
I include in that base the credentialed, but benighted - like you it seems.
This is just weird. Is our hostess attempting to spark conversation by pretending not to understand that OT books of prophecy use poetry/figurative language, or is she genuinely unfamiliar?
I don't observe Advent, myself, but I understand that Rubio is (or was) Catholic and I usually recognize an Advent reading selection when I see one.
@hombre, I have been calling Howard an educated fool since the fire that burned Paradise, CA, but I really like the elegance of labeling him “credentialed but benighted.” Very well done.
Is our hostess attempting to spark conversation by pretending not to understand that OT books of prophecy use poetry/figurative language, or is she genuinely unfamiliar?
The closest she gets is The Collective Wisdom of Bob Dylan
He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy.
Proverbs 28:13
I'm not sure what translation Rubio is quoting, and I'm not going to look it up either, but in this as in so many other cases, the King James (used in the Handel settings above) ranks above the others in the beauty of its language, i.e.
The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain.
Yes, YH. It is by far the most beautifully written translation in English.
(eaglebeak)
Advent is a penitential season, to prepare us for the coming of the Lord. It's not candy canes and big red bows on twinkly trees.
Preparing ourselves for Christmas--the Day of the Lord--etc. has sympathies and harmonies with Nature. If God is walking toward us, of course it's our job to make straight the way--to make Nature welcome Him.
Flattening the earth is an odd translation. Handel wrote The Messiah for the King James Version of the Bible--that is to say, for the English version of the Bible that was the official translation of the Anglican Church when Handel lived in England.
Goes like this:
Isaiah 40:3-5 King James Version (KJV)
3 The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
4 Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain:
5 And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.
This seems harsh? Tell it to Jesus, who considered the "Old Testament"--or Hebrew Scripture--THE Bible. But He probably won't soften it up a bit.
(eaglebeak)
P.S. Apparently Catholics are not aware of it, but many Protestants observe Advent and all liturgical seasons the way Catholics do. Anglicans (Episcopalians), Lutherans, and others observe Advent, Lent, etc.
Rubio started Catholic, became Protestant, now Catholic again--either way, he observes Advent.
(eaglebeak)
Elvis Presley in his heyday recorded hundreds of Christmas carols and hymns and gospel songs. If he came back today, he'd be stoned in the public square (no jokes on "stoned," please).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlfcvUtUoOM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10KMDLJ-i_g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sO99zJw5vCM
The last one was a rehearsal of O Happy Day for performance in Las Vegas; the other two were recordings
The quote is not about flattening the earth or cleansing your soul. It's about building a highway just like it says. You cut down the hills and use the material to fill in the valleys. You make it straight and smooth (plain). I helped build I-59/20 in Alabama. That's how you do it. It's been done that way since ancient times. Isiah is saying if you build a highway for God you use the best techniques. You don't leave a bunch of hills, curves, and rough places.
Had it used the KJV it would have been much more clear:
The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain:
And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.
Rubio is also Mr. Amnesty. So maybe it also means, make way for the illegals.
"I just thought Rubio looked wacky dropping that quote without context."
why?
It's Christmas reference, obviously. Protestant probably wouldn't understand the universal style of welcome to the birth of our savior that We Catholics bring. Merry Christmas to all, and to all, a good night. :)
Let every heart
prepare for Him a room
'cause there's no room at the inn
No, there is no room at the inn
There's no room, there's no room at the inn.
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