Should We Ask God Tough Questions, Or Not? (Isaiah 45:9-25) Series

In verse 10, God/the prophet ups the stakes:

(10) Hey, O one saying to a father,

"What are you fathering/begetting?," [Gen. 5:3, etc.]

while to a woman/wife,

"What are you in labor for? [against backdrop of Isaiah 42:14];"

It's inappropriate for clay to ask the potter what exactly the plan is, or to complain about the finished product at the end of the day. It's even more inappropriate to ask a husband, "What are you having?" Or, when a woman is in labor in the hospital, you probably shouldn't go up to her, and be like, "What's going on? What's the plan?"

And so what God is saying here, is that you exiles are this kind of people. You are like people asking a woman in the middle of labor, what she's doing.

One of my favorite kids' books of all time to read is Julius: Baby of the World. It's about a little mouse named Lily who has a baby brother named Julian, and she hates how much attention he gets from everyone. She thinks he's a terrible, ugly, little thing. She thinks it's ridiculous, the way people ooh and ah over him. And on one of the pages, at the peak of her frustration, she walks by a pregnant mouse-- not her mom, just some random female-- and she says to her, "You'll regret that bump!"

Something like that is the idea here. Husbands and wives together decide when they will have babies. They decide how many they'll have. They have a plan in place, for how their lives will look, hopefully. But even if they don't, you still keep your mouth shut. Right? You can't be like Lily the mouse.

So the idea in verses 9-10 is that the one making things has the right to decide what is made, how it is made, and when it's made. And other people don't have the right to come along and ask the questions. Notice all the questions. "What are you making? What are you fathering? What are you in labor for?" Created things, and people who aren't in charge, have no right to ask these questions.

So God sends out this invitation to his people, who are quarreling with him. His people are clay pots. God is the One Forming them. And what's going on, up to this point, is that God asks questions of the questioners. Is it appropriate for made things, to ask questions of their maker? When you look at the world, and how it functions with cooks, and potters, and mothers, and fathers, is that normally how it works?

Up to this point, it feels like a solidly Group #2 type passage. Don't ask questions. Don't complain. Know your place. Know your role. Keep your mouth shut.

But then we get verse 11 [English Bibles alter the text here repeatedly to make it better fit what the prophet is trying to say. The NET Bible goes all Greta Thurnberg here and even adds in a double "How dare you." But the Hebrew makes good sense, and has no problems. The KJV actually gets it right here, perfectly]:

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=isaiah%2045%3A11&version=NLV;NRSVUE;NET;KJV