32 Behold, a king will reign righteously
And princes will rule justly.
2 Each will be like a refuge from the wind
And a shelter from the storm,
Like [a]streams of water in a dry country,
Like the shade of a [b]huge rock in [c]a parched land.
3 Then the eyes of those who see will not be [d]blinded,
And the ears of those who hear will listen.
4 The [e]mind of the hasty will discern the [f]truth,
And the tongue of the stammerers will hasten to speak clearly.
5 No longer will the fool be called noble,
Or the rogue be spoken of as generous.
6 For a fool speaks nonsense,
And his heart [g]inclines toward wickedness:
To practice ungodliness and to speak error against the Lord,
To [h]keep the hungry person unsatisfied
And [i]to withhold drink from the thirsty.
7 As for a rogue, his weapons are evil;
He devises wicked schemes
To destroy the afflicted with [j]slander,
Even though the needy one speaks [k]what is right.
8 But the noble man devises noble plans;
And by noble plans he stands.
At first, this passage seems all sunshine and roses. The king is righteous, the prices rule justly, and no more cloudy vision. People are listening to the truth, even the hasty folks who don’t have much patience. Then we have the fool and the rogue, and things start to change. To be clear, Isaiah describes a day when those folks will not be considered noble or generous, but the fact that day is unique tells us something about our own time.
Specifically, that fools and rogues are called noble and generous. They are glorified in our culture, just as much, if not more, as they were in Isaiah’s day. You hardly even need to turn on the news to see that much, as it seeps into our movies, books, and just about everything. We lift up the things that ought not to be seen at all, and speak of them as if they were special and worthy of praise.
However, there is also this gray area in our culture, where we have “redemption stories”. Folks who were not good, who rise above it all and do something great. Or at least that is the way it is portrayed, though it often comes with a whole lot of violence and explosions, and all the things necessary for a good action film…
God gives us the true contrast to the fool and the rogue, and it doesn’t involve deception or underhanded dealing. I was just reading an allegory of the story of Esther, and the character (who plays the role of Esther) in that novel was asked if they were going to be sneaky and underhanded like the guy who played the role of Haman (the rogue)?
Instead, she was cunning and clever, but did not resort to the evil methods or do anything that could be anything but what we see in v. 8, “the noble man devises noble plans; and by noble plans he stands.” The same was true of the real Esther, though deceit and wickedness threatened her life, and those of her people, she rose above it, and used only the truth (and her God-given beauty and grace) to win the day.
Through it all, she prayed, her people prayed, fasted, and prayed some more, and they asked God to guide them. There is no plan more noble than the plan of God, if anything else could be called noble at all. Far too often, our plans are self-serving, even if we are no rogues.
Rise above the fool and the rogue, not by your own doing, but by the grace of God. In order to stand firm, we must have our “house”, our hopes, our future, and our plans, built on the rock. That is, the rock that is Jesus, the “chief cornerstone”. Stand on His most noble plans, and nothing else.