I will give them in my house and within my walls a memorial and a name better than of sons and of daughters. I will give them an everlasting name, that will not be cut off.
Isaiah 56:5 (WEB)
in its setting: Isaiah 56:3-8
1 Where we are
Uncle Boon Chye is fifty-eight, and he has not stood for the pledge since 1998, the year he went inside. This afternoon he is behind the counter at four, and the whole street in Bedok has gone red and white. There is a queue of families in matching shirts, ten deep. When the fly-past comes over, low enough to rattle the shop signs, he finds himself out on the five-foot-way with everybody else, still holding a milk jug, looking up. He is careful not to look too pleased about it. Long ago he decided it was safer to keep himself out than to want a place and have someone with the authority to say it tell him he had none.
2 What the passage is doing
Isaiah 56 is spoken to people rebuilding a country after exile, when the question of who properly counts is very much alive. Two men are named. The foreigner, born outside the family. And the eunuch, whose body carried a disqualification he could not undo, and which the law had put in writing: he could not enter the assembly. Both are already saying the sentence out loud — the Lord will surely separate me. God interrupts them mid-sentence and promises them something better than descendants: a name inside his own house.
יִכָּרֵת
yikkaret · shall be cut off
Karat is the word for cutting — a covenant cut, a branch cut, a person cut off from the assembly. It is the very word the law used for exclusion, and for the eunuch it was written into his own body. So God takes the word that had shut the door and turns it around: a name that shall not be cut off. Not tolerated for now. Uncuttable.
3 Taking it with you
So hear it plainly. God did not wait for those men to argue their case, and he is not waiting for you to earn back a standing you think you forfeited. The name is given, not applied for. And the reason it cannot be cut off is that Christ was — cut off out of the land of the living, counted with the guilty, put outside the city so that people with records and shame could be brought inside for good. That place does not get reviewed each year. Today you may stand for the pledge or find you still cannot, and either way you are not on the outside of anything that matters. Look up at the planes with the jug in your hand. You are among your own.
A prayer you can pray
Father, I have kept myself outside for a long time, because being left out hurts less when I do it first. Thank you that you gave me a name in your house before I asked, and that Christ was shut out so I would not be. Help me to believe it today, even standing at the back of the crowd. Amen.
Soli Deo Gloria — to God alone be the glory.
