Priest to the Nations

Isaiah’s promise that strangers and foreigners will tend flocks, farm, and maintain vineyards for Israel (61:5) makes it sound like the nations will do the menial work while Israel lives in cultured leisure.

I suspect something else is in view. Flocks, grain, and wine are liturgical materials in the Hebrew Bible. That strangers serve as shepherds, farmers and vinedressers is to say they provide the sacrificial animals, grain offerings, and libations for Israel. Verse 6 confirms this: Israel will be priests and ministers to Yahweh, while the nations supply their “strength” and glory.

The nations will all become Hirams, who provided wood and craftsmen for Solomon’s temple in exchange for food. The goods exchanged are reversed. The nations will provide things for Israel to “eat” (v. 6), taking up the Solomonic side of the exchange.

So the relationship between Israel and the nations is not primarily one of power: Gentiles employees to Jewish employers. There is a division of labor, but it’s a division between priestly ministers and suppliers.

When Yahweh restores Israel, in short, He will make them what they had always been called to be - a priestly nation, priests to the nations. And in this renewed priestly ministry, Israel will boast not in her own glory but in the nations’ (v. 6).