- Name 51 of 70Our Lawgiver
- HebrewMechoqeqenu
- In plain wordsThe God who gives the law and writes it to last
- Where to find itIsaiah 33:22, in a time of war with Assyria
Our lawgiver is one of three titles Isaiah gives God in a single short verse, Isaiah 33:22. It means the God who sets what is right and wrong and makes it stand, the way words cut into stone stand. The Hebrew word behind it comes from a verb for engraving. And the same verse ends with a rescue, not a threat: the LORD is our lawgiver, the LORD is our king; he will save us
.
A city under threat
Many Bible teachers place Isaiah 33 in the time of King Hezekiah, when the army of Assyria swept into Judah. Assyria was the superpower of the day, and its king Sennacherib took one walled town after another. The Bible records it plainly: Sennacherib king of Assyria come up against all the fenced cities of Judah, and took them
(2 Kings 18:13).
Isaiah 33 feels like that season from the inside. The messengers sent to make peace come home weeping. Travel has stopped. The enemy has broken his promise:
Behold, their valiant ones shall cry without: the ambassadors of peace shall weep bitterly. The highways lie waste, the wayfaring man ceaseth: he hath broken the covenant, he hath despised the cities, he regardeth no man.
Isaiah 33:7-8
A covenant is a binding agreement. Ambassadors are messengers sent to speak for a nation. Even inside Jerusalem, people were scared. Isaiah says The sinners in Zion are afraid
(Isaiah 33:14).
At a moment like that, you might expect a prophet to promise a great general or a stronger army. Isaiah does something stranger. He describes a peaceful city with no warships on its river (Isaiah 33:21), a city whose strength is God Himself. Then he gives the people four short lines to hold on to.
Isaiah's four-line creed
A creed is a short statement of what you believe. Here is Isaiah's:
For the LORD is our judge, the LORD is our lawgiver, the LORD is our king; he will save us.
Isaiah 33:22
Think about what the king of Assyria was. In his empire, he was the judge, the lawmaker and the ruler all at once. His word was law, and conquered people had no one to appeal to. Isaiah takes those same three jobs and hands every one of them to the LORD. For God's people, the final judge is not the emperor. The final lawmaker is not the emperor. The final king is not the emperor.
Israel had known this idea for a long time. The Law of Moses said that when Israel had a king, he had to write out his own copy of God's law and read it every day, That his heart be not lifted up above his brethren
(Deuteronomy 17:18 to 20). In other words, even the king stood under a law he did not write.
And look where the creed lands. It does not end with "so obey, or else." It ends with he will save us
. The One who gives the rules is the same One who comes to the rescue. Isaiah's book later tells how the Assyrian army was struck down and Sennacherib went home to Nineveh (Isaiah 37:36 to 37).
The first line of this creed has its own page, the Judge of all the earth. This page stays with the middle line.
Mechoqeqenu: a lawgiver is an engraver
In Hebrew, "our lawgiver" is a single word, mechoqeqenu. The ending -enu means "our." The rest comes from the verb chaqaq. Strong's dictionary explains that it first meant to hack or engrave, and then came to mean to make a law, because in early times laws were cut into stone or metal tablets.
So in Hebrew thinking, a lawgiver is someone who carves. That carries a picture of permanence. Words cut into rock are not a suggestion that blows away. English has the same idea in the saying "written in stone," and that picture goes back to Mount Sinai:
And he gave unto Moses, when he had made an end of communing with him upon mount Sinai, two tables of testimony, tables of stone, written with the finger of God.
Exodus 31:18
The same verb shows up in a few vivid places. Isaiah uses it for a proud official who graveth an habitation for himself in a rock
, meaning he carved out a fancy tomb for himself (Isaiah 22:16). And Isaiah uses it again in one of the tenderest verses in the Bible. When Zion complained that God had forgotten her, God answered:
Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me.
Isaiah 49:16
The word for graven there is the same chaqaq. The God who carved His law into stone also carved His people into His own hands. The law and the love come from the same hand.
More KJV verses about God's law
The Bible does not treat God's law as a cage. It treats it as a gift:
The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple.
Psalm 19:7
Converting the soul means turning a person around and bringing them back. The writer of Psalm 119 went even further: O how love I thy law! it is my meditation all the day
(Psalm 119:97). And Moses told Israel that God's commandments were given for thy good
(Deuteronomy 10:13).
Why a lawgiver is good news today
A lot of people today say right and wrong are whatever each person decides. That sounds free until someone steals your phone or lies about you. Then almost everyone believes in a law above personal opinion. That deep sense of fairness inside you is a clue that a Lawgiver exists.
Think of God's commands like the guardrail on a mountain road. Nobody complains that the rail spoils the view. It keeps the car from going over the edge. When a rule in the Bible feels annoying, ask what it is protecting. Usually it is guarding something precious: a friendship, your body, your future, your family.
And if you have broken God's law, which every one of us has, remember the rest of Isaiah's verse and the hands in Isaiah 49. When Moses smashed the first stone tablets after the golden calf, God told him to cut two new ones and wrote the words again (Exodus 34:1). The Lawgiver does not give up on His people.
- Choose one of God's commands that bothers you and write down what it might be protecting.
- Read Isaiah 33:22 out loud each morning this week, and lean hardest on the last four words.
- Picture your name engraved on God's hand the next time you feel forgotten.
Our Lawgiver is name 51 of the 70 in the book. It follows An Everlasting King, and next comes the great vision of Daniel 7, the Ancient of Days. For more names like this, see the Hebrew names of God.
