torah: rabbi david etengoff

Chazon: ‘Return to Me and I will return to you’

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This Shabbat is known as “Shabbat Chazon,” based upon the opening words of our haftarah: “The vision (chazon) of Yeshayahu (Isaiah) the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, [and] Hezekiah, kings of Judah.” (Yeshayahu 1:1)1

In keeping with the themes of the Three Weeks and Tisha b’Av, much of this haftarah consists of dire statements of prophecy that bespeak Hashem’s rejection of our behavior, and pronouncements of future disaster:

Woe to a sinful nation, a people heavy with iniquity, evildoing seed, corrupt children. They forsook the L-rd; they provoked the Holy One of Israel; they drew backwards.

Your land is desolate; your cities burnt with fire. Your land — in your presence, strangers devour it; and it is desolate as that turned over to strangers. And the daughter of Zion shall be left like a hut in a vineyard, like a lodge in a cucumber field, like a besieged city. … Of what use are your many sacrifices to Me? says the L-rd. I am sated with the burnt-offerings of rams and the fat of fattened cattle; and the blood of bulls and sheep and male goats I do not want. When you come to appear before Me, who requested this of you, to trample My courts? … And when you spread out your hands, I will hide My eyes from you, even when you pray at length, I do not hear. … How has she [Jerusalem] become a harlot, a faithful city; full of justice, in which righteousness would lodge, but now [there are only] murderers. (Yeshayahu 1:4, 7-8, 11-12, 15 and 21)

Yet, in the midst of these ominous predictions, Yeshayahu’s words of potential reconciliation burst forth as a beacon of hope:

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