Isaiah 55:6: “Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon Him while He is near.”
This is a wonderful verse used to entice people to accept the Lord as their Savior. I grew up in an evangelistic church and heard this verse quoted over and over to convey the truth that tomorrow may be too late to give you life to God. Indeed, I hold that idea very dear, now is the time to accept the Lord, don’t put it off. However, to use this verse to represent a time to accept Jesus as your Savior may be taking it a bit out of context. Let me explain.
There are two reasons I believe the usual application of this verse is out of context. Not that I would never use it to encourage someone to accept the Lord for it is true, but to leave that as our only interpretation means we overlook a greater, deeper meaning.
The word for seek is daresh which has the idea of visiting frequently. You have to ask your self just what is it that you are seeking from the Lord here. The word itself will tell you. The Daleth represents a gateway, a channel or portal. The Resh represents repentance and Shin represents a completeness. What we are seeking here is a doorway to a completion with the Lord through repentance. This completion is the act of bringin our hearts to be as one with him.
This while He may be found business is really something special. While He may be found is all one word: behimase’u. We can really play around with this word and not always come up the standard translation. This is a Niphal infinitive. It has the idea of obtaining or finding, such as finding knowledge about Him. The infinitive form would suggest an overwhelming find. We are to seek the heart of God while He is overwhelming his love upon us.
Stop and think how many times in worship you feel overwhelmed with the love and presence of God. What do you do at that moment? Do you seek His heart or do you just sit back and enjoy the ride. Normally after a service where we have felt a special move and presence of God, I hear people comment: “Wow, that was powerful.” “Wasn’t that something, Yippee!” I rarely hear someone say: “I just learned something special about the heart of God.” Too often our forays into worship are not much more than a trip to an amusement park. Yet when God pours out his Spirit of love and you feel his mighty presence, we need to realize that He is also opening his heart up to us. God is opening His heart to us for a reason, for us to not only enjoy His presence but to minister to Him by learning something new, something very special about Him and to minister to that.
When He opens His heart, we are to call upon him while he is near. The word translated for upon is simply an inseparable pronoun – a Beth – which means in or on. Sure we could say call on him, but grammatically, to say that we should really have the separable pronoun, al. We should really translate it as Call in Him. The word call is qara’ which has two meanings. One is to call or shout. Another is to fall into. I like the idea of falling into him. I think that speaks more of God’s heart. Fall into him while He is near. Remember that seeking is a gateway to enter God’s heart. Repentance will open that gateway or portal to His heart and when it is open we will feel a rush of his love and presence, but don’t stop there, fall into his heart while He is near. The word near is qarav. This word is very closely related to qara which is another reason I chose to translate the word qara as fall into rather than call, because it is making an obvious play on the word qarav which means to approach or be approachable. I would render this as fall into His heart when He is approachable.
The picture is not one of dropping what we are doing and rushing over to God while we have the chance, but one of God with His arms wide open saying: “You have now repented, you are now mine, come on into my arms, you can now approach me.”
Picture that commercial some of us old timers remember from the sixties. “The closer he gets, the better you look.” There we have a pastoral scene of a young couple with arms spread apart, racing through a field towards each other ending in an embrace. That, I believe, is the picture of Isaiah 55:6.
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