After describing in Chapter 3 the calamities that would visit them, such as breaking of support and supply chains, food systems, water systems, civil systems, rise of infantile rulers, misleading guides, oppression, insolence, resulting in their homes and community lying in heaps of ruins...
The Prophetic voice says:
"Woe to them! For they have brought evil on themselves."
"Tell the righteous that it shall be well with them, for they shall eat the fruit of their deeds. Woe to the wicked! It shall be ill with him, for what his hands have dealt out shall be done to him."
The concept of the Golden Rule, reciprocity, reaping what you sow, and bearing fruit in kind with the roots is a frequent theme throughout scripture that reflects the underlying Logos of the Universe, and the Law of God.
Heaven and Hell, whether in this lifetime or beyond, are not arbitrary or capricious judgments or outcomes thrust on us by a tyrannical God. They are something we co-create for ourselves, with every thought, word, and action, or omission. They are something that manifests from us, as a result of what we become.
Heaven, Hell, and every shade of grey between white and black are emergent phenomena, or potentials, that we progressively realize for our selves. They are the fruit we reap as a consequence of the seeds we plant and cultivate. They are what our hands have dealt being dealt back to us, mediated by the Justice and Mercy of God.
Whatever the future holds, we can rest assured that we brought it upon our selves, as God was beckoning us up towards our best and highest Potential and Destiny.
When something like Hell inbreaks and becomes our Reality, it is easy to blame others. In the story in the opening chapters of Isaiah, perhaps the people would be tempted to blame the corrupt and infantile rulers and thieves for the decay of their Society.
However the only reason those rulers and thieves rose up like weeds in the soil of the ecosystem is that the ecosystem tolerated and cultivated their rise through their own moral corruption and abdication of responsibility.
Society, in all its complexity, is like an ecosystem - a dynamic context within which complex interactions among participants result in an emergent reality.
When all the Participants in an ecosystem Hold The Line, follow The Rules, and Play The Game properly, it creates an environment, a Total Nested Hierarchy of Conditions, in which evil cannot rise and flourish.
However when the participants in the ecosystem begin to lose their individual integrity, it creates cracks through which evil, like weeds, can begin to penetrate, gain footholds, and rise. In the dark corners left unattended, the parasitical forces that flourish in darkness creep in and begin to multiply.
Once a society is overrun and lies in ruins, it can be tempting to blame the evil and immoral agents for destroying it, while forgetting that it is only our own failure to establish and uphold a Properly Ordered Society that allowed them to rise.
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