Feast of Saint Bonaventure

O Lord, oppressed by your punishment,
we cried out in anguish under your chastising.
As a woman about to give birth
writhes and cries out in her pains,
so were we in your presence, O Lord.
We conceived and writhed in pain,
giving birth to wind;
Salvation we have not achieved for the earth,
the inhabitants of the world cannot bring it forth.
But your dead shall live, their corpses shall rise;
awake and sing, you who lie in the dust.
For your dew is a dew of light,
and the land of shades gives birth.

Few poets have described the futility of life without God as well as Isaiah the prophet. He knew this anguish not as one who had wasted his youth. That is too easily undone by returning to church and prayer. Isaiah knew futility as the best efforts of his beloved city Jerusalem were invested in a covenant with slavery. 

Jerusalem struggled valiantly against the siege of the Assyrian army. Every effort was made and no sacrifice spared. But Isaiah dared to say what no one would hear  -- only God could save them. The power that had already consumed Elam and Mede and Israel was irresistible. And yet they would not turn to God.

Instead they appealed to Egypt, a powerful nation with a navy, phalanxes of infantry and a  cavalry with iron chariots. Jerusalem “conceived” a covenant with the pharaoh, “writhed in pain” as they waited for the Egyptian army, and felt utter desolation when the Africans did not come. 

Fortunately, much to everyone’s surprise and the bafflement of historians, Jerusalem was spared. The siege was lifted. Perhaps a plague forced the enemy to retire. Expeditionary armies often melt away in foreign territory as they drink unfamiliar water and encounter alien diseases. Or political trouble at home drew the general and his armies back to Damascus. 

Whatever the explanation, Isaiah saw the hand of God in it. For your dew is a dew of light, and the land of shades gives birth.

William Faulkner's comment about poets might be said also of prophets: 

The poets are wrong of course. … But then poets are almost always wrong about facts. That's because they are not really interested in facts: only in truth: which is why the truth they speak is so true that even those who hate poets by simple and natural instinct are exalted and terrified by it.