Isaiah has long been one of my favorite books of the Bible. I’ve had an explorer’s delight of discovering Jesus in several lengthy sections, such as chapters 6-12 and 53-56, but hadn’t studied the book as a whole to see Him. 66 chapters do make for a large time commitment! After many years, opportunity finally presented itself. A Wednesday morning men’s Bible study at my church started studying Isaiah chapter by chapter. So far many wonderful insights of Christ have thrilled me, but this unexpected sighting of Jesus in chapter 20 tops them all! Whenever Jesus makes a surprise appearance on our Emmaus road through the Scripture, our heart burns and we run to tell others!
In the year that the commander in chief, who was sent by Sargon the king of Assyria, came to Ashdod and fought against it and captured it—at that time the Lord spoke by Isaiah the son of Amoz, saying, “Go, and loose the sackcloth from your waist and take off your sandals from your feet,” and he did so, walking naked and barefoot.
Isaiah 20:1-2 ESV
Setting aside for now the outlandishness of what Isaiah was commanded to do, note how the Lord timed it when Ashdod fell. “At that time the LORD spoke.” The Septuagint translation uses the Greek word tote for “at that time.” Tote is an emphatic then, when the author draws attention to cause and effect. Intentionally binds together the fall of Ashdod and Isaiah’s nakedness and “barefootedness.” It’s not merely chronological sequence.
Earlier, Isaiah prophesied an invasion of the Philistines, Ashdod being one of its five chief cities:
Wail, O gate; cry out, O city;
melt in fear, O Philistia, all of you!
For smoke comes out of the north,
and there is no straggler in his ranks.
Isaiah 14:31 ESV
This “smoke out of the north” refers to the Assyrian army. Assyria was the world’s superpower, the empire dominating the world’s geopolitical scene. So although Assyria conquered all five Philistine cities, the Lord waited specifically for Ashdod to fall before commissioning Isaiah. Why Ashdod? In which order these Philistine cities fell we’re not told. Ashdod may have been first, last, or in between. Isaiah’s sparing use of geographic descriptors are significant, either a hyperlink elsewhere in his prophecy or a flashback to Israel’s long history, to deepen understanding. They’re intended to arouse our curiosity. It’s like that big “X” on a pirate’s treasure map that shows you where to dig. So dig here we will.
The Philistines are all over the place in the Old Testament. History abounds from the times of Abraham, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, David and the kings. Ashdod, though, of its own claim to fame, really only had one notable national memory. To a 21st century reader Ashdod doesn’t mean much but to a Jew in Isaiah’s day it bristled with significance. It’s like Gettysburg to Americans—huge with meaning because of the epic battle between Union and Confederate armies there. God’s story concerning Ashdod had to do with the capture of the tabernacle’s ark as told in 1 Samuel 4-5.
Ashdod’s capture is a precursor of the capture of Egypt and Ethiopia:
Then the Lord said, “Just as My servant Isaiah has walked naked and barefoot three years for a sign and a wonder against Egypt and Ethiopia, so shall the king of Assyria lead away the Egyptians as prisoners and the Ethiopians as captives, young and old, naked and barefoot, with their buttocks uncovered, to the shame of Egypt.”
Isaiah 20:3-4 NKJV
Egypt and Ethiopia (or Cush) were just two of many in a long list of Assyria’s war trophies. Because of Egypt’s idolatry, the Lord had vowed, “I will give over the Egyptians into the hand of a hard master, and a fierce king will rule over them” (Isa 19:4). This fierce king, the king of Assyria, led them away naked into captivity. The sign and wonder, though, is not Egypt and Ethiopia in captivity and exile; it is Isaiah, God’s chosen prophet, walking naked and barefoot for three years. But before we dive into that, let’s peek into Ashdod’s history to discover its connection here.
Israel’s spirituality was at low tide in the early days of 1 Samuel. Israel had abandoned the Lord and clung to idols, not unlike the apostasy of Isaiah’s day. They’d even sunk so low as to have made the ark of God into an idol. They trusted the box, not the Lord.
“Why has the Lord defeated us today before the Philistines? Let us bring the ark of the covenant of the Lord here from Shiloh, that it may come among us and save us from the power of our enemies.”
1 Samuel 4:3 ESV
They believed that ark to be a powerful “it” to save them. “As soon as the ark of the covenant of the Lord came into the camp, all Israel gave a mighty shout, so that the earth resounded” (4:5). NKJV says “the earth shook.” The Philistine army panicked at first, then steeled themselves with fresh resolve, not only routing Israel but achieving the unthinkable: they captured the ark of God. They hauled it to Ashdod where they proudly displayed it alongside their “victorious” god, Dagon, the male version of a mermaid (5:1-2).
Now, the Psalms often offer commentary on into what God thought about Israel’s erratic history. Psalm 78 elucidates this capture of the ark. On the surface the psalm retells Israel’s long history of rebelling against the Lord time and again, and time and again the Lord responding with patience and tough love. But the Holy Spirit, who knows the deep things of God, sees more. Matthew affirms that the psalmist’s voice and voice of Jesus are one (see Matt 13:34-35)! Notably, Psalm 78 is one long parable:
Give ear, O my people, to my teaching;
Psalm 78:1-2 ESV
incline your ears to the words of my mouth!
I will open my mouth in a parable;
I will utter dark sayings from of old,
Jesus, the superstar of parables, speaks this parable here in Psalm 78. So the capture of the ark is a parable, an earthly story with a heavenly meaning. It’s summarized like this:
For they provoked him to anger with their high places;
Psalm 78:58-61 ESV
they moved him to jealousy with their idols.
When God heard, he was full of wrath,
and he utterly rejected Israel.
He forsook his dwelling at Shiloh,
the tent where he dwelt among mankind,
and delivered his power to captivity,
his glory to the hand of the foe.
The ark, here referred to as “his power” and “his glory,” went into captivity as the result of Israel’s repeated forsaking the Lord for idols. After Israel’s crushing defeat, a cry rang out: “The glory has departed from Israel, for the ark of God has been captured” (1Sa 4:22). This golden ark had a seat, a throne called the mercy seat, with a cherubim perched on either side. The ark was a picture of King Jesus. The earthly story of the ark’s captivity has its heavenly explanation in Jesus, God’s regal power and glory, being delivered into captivity. We’re familiar when this happened. It started when Jesus was arrested in the garden of Gethsemane.
Now back to Isaiah. “Just as My servant Isaiah has walked naked and barefoot three years for a sign and a wonder…” The prophet himself supplies vital clues to this strange, unprecedented sign and wonder. Isaiah the man often functions as a parable of the Lord Jesus Christ. Isaiah’s “Here am I, send me” in chapter 6 mirrors the Lord’s willingness to be sent as Immanuel in chapter 7. As the people rejected Isaiah’s message (also in chapter 6), so too with Jesus’ ministry (Mt 13:13-15). Isaiah’s voice—”Here am I and the children You have given Me” (8:18)—is the voice of Christ! (see Heb 2:13) Isaiah’s tears for the Moabites (Isa 16:9) are the Lord’s tears, as affirmed by Jeremiah’s nearly identical prophecy (Jer 48:30-32). Isaiah’s weeping for Jerusalem (Isa 22:4)? Jesus did it too (Lk 19:41)! Isaiah’s words and deeds are repeatedly replayed in Jesus but magnified and universalized to all mankind. So we’ve been prepped to anticipate Isaiah here in chapter 20 as a sign and wonder to point to the Messiah. But how?
Isaiah going naked and barefoot first pointed to the Ethiopian and Egyptian captivity, the earthly story. The most famous sign in Isaiah is that which God gave to King Ahaz: Immanuel, the child born of a virgin (7:14). Now this sign did have immediate relevance in Ahaz’ day. Isaiah’s wife, called “the prophetess,” was the virgin (the Hebrew word can also mean a young woman) who bore a son aptly named “Spoil-Speeds-Plunder-Hurries” (8:3-4), God’s pledge to annihilate Syria and Samaria that were threatening to conquer Jerusalem right then (compare with 7:14-16). That’s what the sign meant to King Ahaz. Matthew’s Gospel, however, heralded this parable’s heavenly meaning in Jesus. This Immanuel saved not from the consequences of sin (i.e., invading armies) but of sin itself: “He will save His people from their sins.” Likewise this sign and wonder of Isaiah walking stripped and barefoot aims beyond the momentary applicability of Ethiopian and Egyptian captivity.
The heart of this strange spectacle is the prophet’s bondage. Assyria’s seizure of Ashdod connects the dots: the ark in captivity to the prophet in captivity. The two parables are one! In Jesus this linkage makes sense. The biblical authors often stack images on top of a single event so we can visualize a fuller panorama of meaning. Comparing and contrasting together these two images, the ark and the prophet, better illuminate what the captivity of Christ truly means. It is characteristic of Isaiah to focus multiple camera angles on the same event. He keeps repeating his ABCs—Assyria, Babylon, Christ—throughout his prophetic pronouncements, using varied images to tease out their significance.
This nakedness, with the buttocks uncovered, was “to the shame of Egypt.” Scripture has numerous references to nakedness and shame. Jesus said, “Behold, I am coming as a thief. Blessed is he who watches, and keeps his garments, lest he walk naked and they see his shame” (Rev 16:15 NKJV). Commentators disagree about how Isaiah’s nakedness played out. Many suggest it was just stripping the outer garment, sort of like us today walking around in our underwear. The Hebrew word for naked does mean literal nakedness, its first usage with Adam and Eve: “And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed” (Gen 2:25). Now out of modesty, artistic renditions in paintings and movies provide a loincloth for Jesus on the cross. Roman crucifixion, however, offered no such nicety; the sufferer was subjected to the humiliation of complete nakedness. So it was for the last Adam, “who was a type of the one who was to come,” Jesus (Rom 5:14).
What’s 100% clear is that Isaiah’s nakedness consisted of removing his sackcloth. “Go, and loose the sackcloth from your waist and take off your sandals from your feet.” Throughout the Bible wearing sackcloth is an outward garment expressing a mourning heart. Contrast Isaiah with the flippant attitude of the people of Jerusalem around that time:
In that day the Lord God of hosts called for weeping and mourning, for baldness and wearing sackcloth; and behold, joy and gladness, killing oxen and slaughtering sheep, eating flesh and drinking wine. “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”
Isaiah 22:12-13
Unlike the flinty heart of the people who refused sackcloth even as the armies of God’s prophesied judgment encircled them, Isaiah’s heart was tender. Even King Hezekiah, one of Judah’s finest kings, donned sackcloth when judgment was at his doorstep but totally missed it later in life (Isa 39:8). This points to the Lord Jesus, the Prophet with the tender heart who embodied the spirit of wearing sackcloth:
And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side.
Luke 19:41-43
Now, God could have very easily made His point by Isaiah walking naked and barefoot just once. Instead He chose to do it for three years. This didn’t mean that Jesus would also do this for three years. The longevity conveys the intensity of that shame. It surpassed embarrassment. This was utter humiliation. A call to such egregious disgrace shocks our sensibilities. Earlier on Isaiah proclaimed, “Here am I… we are for signs and wonders in Israel from the Lord of hosts” (8:18). What if the Lord had called upon you to walk naked and barefoot for three years as a sign to your neighborhood? That’s not a sign and wonder we pray for! This prolonged indignity arouses our emotions. We feel. We cringe. We empathize. The Prophet to come suffered the humiliation of nakedness on the cross, a shame aggravated because of who He was. This was the eternal Holy One, Creator of heaven and earth!
What does barefoot signify? This is different from Moses taking his shoes off at the burning bush as a respect for God’s holiness. (Practically though, shoes off the feet meant not traveling anywhere, so in essence, “Stay here with Me.”) In the context of Assyrian captivity, forcing prisoners to march barefoot into exile was cruel. It rubbed salt into the wound of being led away captive from one’s homeland.
A Jew reading this account would recognize this rare word “barefoot”—yāḥēp̄—from King David’s trail of tears up the Mount of Olives (2Sa 15:30). This allusion to David fits Isaiah’s ABCs—Christ (e.g., a new King David as a branch from the stump of Jesse (11:1)). King David’s exile in bare feet out of Jerusalem prompted by Absalom’s rebellion is the only other narrative example for yāḥēp̄. Barefoot in both stories conveys the idea of sorrowful exile.
As pointed out, Isaiah’s life was an acted out parable of our Lord Jesus, like Jonah in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights was a “pre-enactment” of Jesus in the tomb. No other prophet before or after Isaiah was called to go naked and barefoot. Until Jesus. Back in Isaiah 7 we saw the first sign of Immanuel. Here in Isaiah 20 we find a second sign of this Immanuel to come. The One born of a virgin would go into captivity by the hand of a world empire, not Assyria but Rome. This prophet too would be led away barefoot, an expression of sorrowful exile, expelled from Jerusalem as did His father David before Him. Hebrews says it this way:
So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood. Therefore let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured.
Hebrews 13:12-13
Isaiah was called to go naked and barefoot those three years not because of his own sins:
Then they shall be afraid and ashamed of Ethiopia their expectation and Egypt their glory.
Isaiah 20:5 NKJV
Why did Isaiah suffer this shame? It wasn’t because he’d done anything wrong but for the sins of these two nations. Nationalism and patriotism reigned supreme in their lives with no regard to God. The Septuagint translates “expectation” with a Greek word that literally means “the thing looked to,” hence, the object of hope, confidence or trust. Because they looked to their country as the object of their hope, Isaiah had to suffer three years of shame. The Prophet to come is to be the One object of our hope, confidence and trust. Whereas Isaiah’s sign was limited to Egypt and Ethiopia, a representative ethnic sample, Jesus became a sign and wonder to every tribe and tongue and people and nation! So this Prophet would go naked and barefoot, not for His own sins but for the sins of the nations. Psalm 78 echoed the refrain, God delivering His power to captivity and His glory to the hand of the foe because of the sins of Israel. Jew and Gentile are complicit in Jesus’ shame and exile. The Man of Sorrows suffered for the humiliation we deserved. Isaiah’s nakedness was a preview of that great 53rd chapter to come, where the suffering Prophet not only bore the our shameful nakedness but our sins in full.
So many falsely accuse God in the Old Testament as being a mean tyrant of wrath and judgment. See here how even as the Lord was prophesying righteous judgment on the nations of Egypt and Ethiopia, He looked ahead towards a far more horrific judgment that He Himself would willingly subject Himself to for all the nations. What condescending mercy! What grace!
No Gospel writer noted Jesus walking barefoot as He was led away from the city to Golgotha. It is plausible, though, knowing the Romans’ reputation for cruelty. Keep in mind that Isaiah’s visions of the crucifixion scene include vivid details omitted by the Gospels. Only Isaiah envisioned, “So His visage was marred more than any man, and His form more than the sons of men” (52:14). Only Isaiah speaks of Jesus’ beard: “I gave…My cheeks to those who plucked out the beard; I did not hide My face from shame and spitting” (50:6). Jesus may very well have been forced to walk the Via Dolorosa barefoot en route to the cross.
We now come full circle as to why God joined these two parables together. The ark presents captivity from the perspective of the King, Isaiah of the Prophet. The two parables coalesce in the capture of Jesus, the Prophet-King. Whereas the ark showcases the glory and power of the King even in captivity, Isaiah as prophet highlights its shame and weakness. One parable could not tell the whole story. The King shows off the glories achieved, the victories won. The god Dagon breaks and bows down before the ark of all the earth. Jesus’ authority dominates that idol! Occurring simultaneously with kingly conquest, the suffering Prophet brings out its shame and weakness. The capture of Egypt and Ethiopia by the Assyrians was a great illustration of weakness. These once powerful nations reduced to captivity exemplified utter weakness. Jesus, too, was “crucified in weakness” (2Co 13:4).
Isaiah’s sign and wonder pointed to the sufferings that Jesus would undertake to overturn the curse of Eden for all humanity. It deepens our awe of Jesus, our Creator-King who subjected Himself to such indignity. By humbling Himself to the indignity of nakedness, He undid the shame of Adam and Eve’s nakedness. By going barefoot, whether literally or figuratively, He undid the exile out of Eden. Jesus went barefoot that we could be welcomed back into the Father’s house with the sandals of acceptance. The glory of grace! “Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into his glory?” (Luke 24:26). Jesus suffered and died as our substitute that we might also join Him in glory as image bearers of God. The Prophet’s captivity is our freedom. The Prophet’s shame is our glory. The Prophet’s exile is our homecoming back to Paradise for glory thieves like you and me. Hallelujah!
Glory Unveiled: Discovering Jesus 