Spoke 7

Isaiah 29 Joel

Moreover the multitude of thy strangers shall be like small dust, and the multitude of the terrible ones shall be as chaff that passeth away: yea, it shall be at an instant suddenly. Thou shalt be visited of the LORD of hosts with thunder, and with earthquake, and great noise, with storm and tempest, and the flame of devouring fire.

Isaiah 29 (vss. 5f)

Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe: come, get you down; for the press is full, the fats overflow; for their wickedness is great. Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision: for the day of the LORD is near in the valley of decision.

Book 29 (Joel 3.13f)

The greatest density of the phrase the Day of the Lord is found in the little book of Joel on Spoke 7, where it occurs six times. This integrates with the great theme of judgment that dominates this Spoke and the theme of fulness (in the sense of the "fulness of time," i.e. judgment day) that manifests so clearly in Colossians (Spoke 7, Cycle 3). This is seen in the words ripe, full, and overflow used in the quote from Joel above.

Isaiah 29 speaks of the day of the Lord with extreme language, saying "Thou shalt be visited of the LORD of hosts with thunder, and with earthquake, and great noise, with storm and tempest, and the flame of devouring fire." This integrates with the primary theme of Joel which is contained in verse 3.12:

Let the heathen be wakened, and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat: for there will I sit to judge all the heathen round about.

Jehoshaphat means "The Lord is Judge." The Valley of Jehoshaphat is a symbol of the final judgment, as discussed in the Spoke 7 article called The Valley of Jehoshaphat.

Isaiah 29 continues by describing the effect of the Lord's judgment as a kind of drunkeness (Isaiah 29.9f):

Stay yourselves, and wonder; cry ye out, and cry: they are drunken, but not with wine; they stagger, but not with strong drink.

The highlighted phrase occurs in only one other verse of the entire KJV. In Isaiah 51 we read (I begin in verse 19 for context):

These two things are come unto thee; who shall be sorry for thee? desolation, and destruction, and the famine, and the sword: by whom shall I comfort thee? Thy sons have fainted, they lie at the head of all the streets, as a wild bull in a net: they are full of the fury of the LORD, the rebuke of thy God. Therefore hear now this, thou afflicted, and drunken, but not with wine

We have, therefore, a Spoke 7 InnerWheel KeyLink between Isaiah 29 (Spoke 7, Cycle 2) and Isaiah 51 (Spoke 7, Cycle 3). Using geometric notation to represent the verses as Points and modular notation to represent the Numbers 29 and 51 modulo 22, we arrive at the following:

	KeyLink Phrase: 'Drunken, but not with wine'
	PIsaiah( 72 ) PIsaiah( 73 )

This shows how Isaiah mimics the structure of the Wheel. Not only do we have innumerable Links and KeyLinks between chapters of Isaiah and their corresponding books of the Bible, but we also have KeyLinks between the elements of the Spokes of the Inner Wheel of Isaiah itself!

The theme of drunkeness, found on both Cycle 2 and Cycle 3 of Spoke 7 of the Inner Wheel of Isaiah also figures prominantly in the opening verses of Joel found on Spoke 7, Cycle 2 of the Bible Wheel. We read (vs. 1.5):

Awake, ye drunkards, and weep; and howl, all ye drinkers of wine, because of the new wine; for it is cut off from your mouth. For a nation is come up upon my land, strong, and without number, whose teeth are the teeth of a lion, and he hath the cheek teeth of a great lion.

Searching the entire KJV for all verses containing the set {drunk*, drink*, wine} within one verse of "nation*" yields exactly one other passage: Isaiah 29.8f:

And the multitude of all the nations that fight against Ariel [Lion of God], even all that fight against her and her munition, and that distress her, shall be as a dream of a night vision. It shall even be as when an hungry man dreameth, and, behold, he eateth; but he awaketh, and his soul is empty: or as when a thirsty man dreameth, and, behold, he drinketh; but he awaketh, and, behold, he is faint, and his soul hath appetite: so shall the multitude of all the nations be, that fight against mount Zion. Stay yourselves, and wonder; cry ye out, and cry: they are drunken, but not with wine; they stagger, but not with strong drink.

We have another KeyLink:

KeyLink: Drunken with the Judgment of the Lord

Isaiah 29Joel

There are numerous links between these verses, too many to mention here. They center around words like awake, arise, multitude, lion/Ariel, drunk, and judge. This also integrates with the chapter sequence of the Psalms. Consider these words from Psalm 7:

Arise, O LORD, in thine anger, lift up thyself because of the rage of mine enemies: and awake for me to the judgment that thou hast commanded. ... The LORD shall judge the people: judge me, O LORD, according to my righteousness, and according to mine integrity that is in me.

Returning to Isaiah 29, we continue with verse 10:

For the LORD hath poured out upon you the spirit of deep sleep, and hath closed your eyes: the prophets and your rulers, the seers hath he covered. And the vision of all is become unto you as the words of a book that is sealed, which men deliver to one that is learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee: and he saith, I cannot; for it is sealed:

The spirit that the Lord poured out here in Isaiah 29 correlates with this prophecy from Book 29, Joel as a polar opposite (Joel 2.28f):

And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions: And also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour out my spirit.

In Isaiah 29 God pours out a spirit of deep sleep so on the prophets so they can not prophecy, and in Joel He pours out His Own Spirit of prophecy on His servants. This kind of symmetry is extremely common on the Wheel. Corresponding elements typically reveal the positive and negative aspects of a concept. A very obvious example is seen in the relation between Lamentations and II Corinthians on Spoke 3. Both contain a high density of the word "comfort" which relates directly to the name of the Third Person of the Trinity, but in Lamentations the comfort of God is explicitly absent where as in II Corinthians it is conspicuously present.

Finally, this prophecy from Joel on Spoke 7 is manifest in History on Spoke 22 on the day of Pentacost in the Book of Acts which is linked to Isaiah 44. There is a mystrious relation between the Number 7 and the Number 22 that I am still working to explicate. THey both are deeply integrated with the Wheel composed of 22 Spokes and 7 Canonical Divisions. Also, in the text of Scripture, the Number 7 is by far and away the most poerful and obvious symbolic Number, and the Number 22 is built into the text in the alaphabetic verses. Taken together, these two numbers for the best possible approximation to PI = 3.14 that can be attained using integers less than 100. The Number 22/7 has been used as an approximatin to PI - the Number that governs the Circle - for millenia.

And so it goes - the endless wonders and riches of God's Holy Word!

Questions? Comments? Join the discussion on the Bible Wheel Forum!